FTX Hackers Do Pepel Chaining To Disburse Their Jarahan Coin

FTX hackers move the looted funds. (photo: dock. Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Hackers behind the theft of more than $447 million from cryptocurrencies from the FTX crypto exchange have again been seen moving their illicit funds.

According to Etherscan data, between 16:11 a.m. to 16:17 a.m. UTC on November 21, these hackers moved a total of 180,000 Ethers to 12 newly created wallets. Each wallet received 15,000 ETHs. The total number transferred amounted to 199.3 million US dollars at the current price.

At the time of publication Monday, November 21, the ETH had not moved from one of the 12 wallets.

Some crypto communities predict hackers may be planning to divide it into smaller and smaller amounts to confuse investigators. This is a process known as "peel chaining," or they may plan to use mixing services at some point to obscure which coins belong to them.

Meanwhile, some Ethereum users appear to have sent a coded message to hackers asking for parts of the loot.

A user registered the domain name Ethereum Name Service (ENS), ftx-rent200k-pls-help.eth to state that they have lost money due to the collapse of FTX and are seeking replacement from hackers.

They sent 21 transactions 0.000001 Ether to the hacker's address in a bid to get attention.

Other users are even more creative. They registered the domain ENS, pleasecheckutf8data.eth and sent 12 transactions worth 0.0001 ETH or less, to the hacker wallet address.

In every transaction there is a message coded UTF8 that reads, "Please send me 100rb~, I have to pay medical bills and visit the US in December. I can't walk properly, and have an aggressive muscle problem. Please help! I lost most of my money at FTX."

The message also contains a link to an Imgur post that users claim is proof of their medical promise.

The hack took place on November 11, the same day FTX filed for bankruptcy protection chapter 11.

On November 20, the attacker transferred 50,000 ETH to separate wallets and then converted it into Bitcoin using two separate renBTC bridges. To this day, the hacker is the 40th largest ETH holder.