Tag: Police

Two suspects have been arrested by the French police in connection with Platypus

by Blockchain News

According to the authorities in the area, the French police have made two arrests in connection with the 9.1 million euro cryptocurrency heist that was perpetrated by Platypus, and they have also reported seizing 210,000 euros worth of bitcoin.

According to Platypus, the on-chain sleuth ZachXBT and the cryptocurrency exchange Binance provided help for the investigations that led to the arrests. On February 16, a single exploiter carried out three different flash loan assaults, each of which resulted in a breach of the decentralized system.

As a consequence of the assaults, a number of stablecoins in addition to other digital assets were stolen. The first assault led to the theft of valuables worth roughly $8.5 million, which were then sold off. In the second occurrence, about 380,000 assets were delivered to the Aave v3 contract when they should not have been. The third break-in resulted in the theft of around $287,000 worth of goods. As a direct consequence of the hack, the stablecoin known as Platypus USD (USP) was untethered from the United States dollar.

Platypus has just established that the perpetrators employed a flash loan technique in order to investigate a logic flaw inside the USP solvency check mechanism within the collateral-holding. The operations of the stable swap have not been disrupted in any way.

Avi Eisenberg, the exploiter of Mango Market, is said to have employed the similar technique, which is known as a flash assault, when he claimed credit for manipulating the price of the MNGO currency in October 2022. Following the discovery of the vulnerability, Eisenberg said that “all of our acts were legitimate open market actions, utilizing the protocol as it was intended.” On December 28th, Eisenberg was taken into custody in Puerto Rico on allegations related to fraud.

On February 23, Platypus made public their proposal to reimburse customers who had their monies stolen. The protocol stipulates that 63% of the monies from the primary pool shall be returned within a period of six months. Reminting the stablecoins that have been frozen according to the plan might result in 78% of the cash being returned. According to what was indicated in the protocol, “if our application presented to Aave is granted and Tether verifies reminting the frozen USDT, we will be able to retrieve about 78% of user’s cash.”

Source

Tagged : / / / /

Dubai Police Releases Free NFTs to Enhance Authority

by Blockchain News

As part of a campaign to showcase security, innovation, and communication values, the Dubai Police has rolled out a set of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) comprising 150 free digital assets, according to local media outlet Khaleej Times. 

Khalid Naseer Al Razooqi, Director of the General Department of Artificial Intelligence at Dubai Police, noted:

“All those interested have to do is share the announcement of Dubai Police Value NFT post with their friends and send a direct message with their names, emails, and NFT wallet addresses to Dubai Police on their social media platforms.”

The NFTs will be rolled out for free as long as the public, both inside and outside the nation, participates in the campaign.

As the first government entity in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to develop its digital assets, the Dubai Police seeks to enhance policing.

Al Razooqi pointed out:

“NFT related Information documented on a blockchain cannot be falsified or copied at all.”

NFTs continue taking the world by storm based on some of their traits like limited supply and proof of ownership. 

Having set its eyes on becoming a blockchain and crypto capital, the UAE is setting the ball rolling by establishing various initiatives.

For instance, crypto companies got the green light to set up business in the Dubai Multi-Commodities Centre (DMCC) free zone last year. 

Likewise, Citizens School, Dubai educational institution, recently announced the acceptance of Bitcoin and Ethereum payments for tuition, Blockchain.News reported. 

The institution partnered with a digital currency platform to process the crypto payments by automatically converting them to dirhams (AED). Therefore, the crypto-friendly approaches being adopted in the UAE have made nearly 67% of residents to be interested in crypto investments, according to data analytics firm YouGov. 

Image source: Shutterstock

Source

Tagged : / / / /

Cyber vigilante hunts down DeFi scammers running away with $25M rug pull

by Cointelegraph

In the world of digital finance, where the weapon of choice for a heist is a computer rather than a semi-automatic firearm, tracking down scams and frauds from across the world becomes a near-impossible feat for centralized police forces. 

However, in an interview with Cointelegraph, an anonymous cyber vigilante shares insights into how he went about tracking down a group of decentralized finance (DeFi) scammers responsible for the $25 million StableMagnet rug pull, coordinating with police authorities and eventually having the stolen money returned back to the investors.

The StableMagnet platform lured unwary investors under the pretext of high returns against stablecoin deposits. In a typical rug pull event, StableMagnet managed to run away with the $25 million that was invested by over 1000 users.

Right before the rug pull, the cyber vigilante (anonymous for obvious reasons) examined the code to ensure the legitimacy of the project prior to investing himself. However, what he missed out on were a number of messages on Twitter alerting him on the possible exploits and vulnerabilities in the system. 

Taking things personally, the vigilante — an active ethical hacker — set out to track the scammers and bring justice to the investors. He told Cointelegraph:

“I just felt like this was the only opportunity in my life — to have a very meaningful impact in a situation where most people are not going to have the time and the gusto to do that kind of thing.”

Starting from tracking down a GitHub account to identifying all family members of the scammers through social media accounts, our vigilante’s investigation pinpointed a group of Chinese locals from Hong Kong.

Eventually, the anonymous vigilante tracked down the scammers’ travel to a Chinatown in Manchester — a temporary move until the commotion died down:

“I didn’t want them to go to jail. I don’t like the centralized forces to come into the decentralized world as much as we possibly can.”

Taking the matter into his own hands, he booked a one-way flight ticket to Manchester while contacting local police authorities citing the narrow timeline before the scammers move to a different location. To the vigilante’s surprise, the Greater Manchester Police reacted swiftly and arrested a few of the scammers.

The police retrieved different pieces of a single USB device from the scammers, which contained roughly $9 million:

“Once that occurred, it was believable to the other project people (scammers) that I wasn’t BSing about finding them and knowing where they were and being able to get them taught if

Following the arrests, other members of StableMagnet cooperated with the cyber vigilante and returned the majority of the loot. Ever since the development, his message has been heard loud and clear, “maybe it’s not a good idea to scam, at least not on the Binance Smart Chain.”