Senior security engineer Shakib Ahmed acknowledged breaking into another anonymous, decentralized exchange (DEX) and the Nirvana Finance protocol.
As per the statement, Ahmed consented to reimburse $12.3 million that was acquired due to the exploit and furnish $5.07 million in recompense. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Ahmed stole money from an unidentified Solana-based exchange in the summer of 2022 by exploiting a flaw in the exchange’s smart contract.
The hacker launched another attack on a different Nirvana Finance initiative a few weeks later. Officials from Protocol offered him a $500,000 prize for returning the money, but they could never reach a consensus.
Shakib Ahmed was found guilty by a Southern District of New York court of breaching smart contracts and pilfering assets. According to U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, Shakib Ahmed’s case represents the first conviction for this kind of hack:
“My Office announced the first-ever arrest involving an attack on a smart contract. Today, senior security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed pled guilty and agreed to return all of the stolen crypto to his victims.”
Ahmed could spend up to five years behind bars. On March 13, 2024, the case’s ultimate decision will be rendered. Authorities in the United States are seeing more and more evidence of fraud in the Bitcoin space.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, four of the ten major bitcoin offenses this year included cryptocurrencies. US regulators targeted the biggest cryptocurrency market operators following the bankruptcy of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange in November 2022.
U.S. officials, chiefly the Securities and Exchange Commission, have been using some of the top players in the cryptocurrency market or the people who issue their assets since the start of the year. Attacks were also launched targeting banks that offered cryptocurrency platform accounts and payment processing services.
