Almost six years have passed since one of the biggest crypto attacks on the Ethereum network. 3.6 million ETH worth $9 billion at current prices was siphoned to an unknown account. Until now, the incident has gone unresolved, but the journalist Laura Shin believes that she has found who the attacker was, Bloomberg confirms.
In her new book and recent articles, she describes how the alleged Austrian attacker Toby Hoenisch was gradually draining funds through a DAO-based application, after previously having pointed out a flaw in the system.
The attack caused some major issues on the network, forcing the ETH developers to split the blockchain into two to prevent even more funds from being drained. As a result, the hacker was left with what we know today as the Ethereum classic, which, while lesser in value, still left them with $94 million worth of today’s price of the cryptocurrency.
The alleged attacker, Toby Hoenisch, the co-founder and chief financial officer of Euro-pegged stablecoin project Mimo Capital, has denied all the allegations. However, Shin states that she has “extremely strong evidence of the attacker’s identity” along with detailed transaction records.
She also pointed out how blockchain technology provides enough transparency and promises hope for other crypto crimes to be solved eventually. She says about cyber-attackers: “This may get them wondering if blockchain forensics will catch up to them later, even if they use the latest crypto obfuscation techniques today.”
Although no official legal action has been taken so far, if a further investigation proves these allegations to be true, it could represent a significant step in the right direction of solving crypto-related crimes in the future.