XRP, one of the most notable altcoins and a constant in the top 10, continues to experience developments. Yesterday afternoon, an attack was carried out on an address said to be a Ripple official’s wallet, resulting in the theft of millions of XRP.
Major Blockade from Binance
In the troubled aftermath of an attack linked to Ripple, the issuer of XRP, multiple cryptocurrency exchanges were alerted and initiated investigations due to the use of multiple platforms to track the stolen $112.5 million worth of XRP.
Amidst these events, a statement was made by Binance‘s new CEO Richard Teng. Teng announced that his exchange had frozen the accounts containing the stolen XRP, valued at $4.2 million, which were taken by unknown attackers on January 31st. This amount is known to correspond to approximately 8.3 million XRP.
Teng promised that his company would continue to work with Ripple and related parties to facilitate a comprehensive recovery.
Richard Teng, CEO of Binance, made the following statement:
We will continue to support Ripple in their investigations and efforts to recover the funds; this includes closely monitoring the majority of the funds still in the attackers’ external wallets against the possibility of depositing to Binance.
Binance CEO also extended his congratulations and gratitude to blockchain detective ZachXBT, who was the first to detect the suspicious transactions on January 31st.
Zach quickly shared details about the theft of 213 million XRP and the subsequent distribution of these stolen funds across exchanges.
Statement from Ripple Official
Chris Larsen, co-founder and executive chairman of Ripple, stated that the funds were his in a recent announcement. Larsen revealed that unauthorized access to his personal accounts had occurred but chose not to share details about how the attack was successfully carried out.
The incident appeared different from typical hack events. The wallet was emptied as quickly as possible, and crypto mixers like Tornado Cash were used to obscure the transactions.
Despite all this, the attack continued for a long time, and the attackers kept stealing XRP for at least 10 hours before sending the stolen XRP to centralized exchanges like Binance.
