The attacker who drained over $8 million in NXM from the founder of Nexus Mutual has demanded $2.8 million in ETH to prevent disposing of the hacked funds. The hacker states in a message that if the CEO declines to pay a 4,500 Ether ransom, recently worth approximately $2.8 million, the attacker would withhold the tokens for now. However, the token discards will occur when the NXM price increases.
The attacker originally stole NXM (Nexus Mutual) tokens and then transformed them into the ether (ETH) first and then renBTC through decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch and DEX protocol Matcha. Clearly, the attacker sold 102,000 NXM on 1inch and 16,000 NXM on Matcha. The remaining funds are still in the attacker’s possession at different locations. One of the attacker’s addresses is associated with crypto exchange Huobi. It is a native Ethereum address on their exchange.
Nexus Mutual offers a bounty of $300,000 to the hacker.
Moreover, the attacker’s withdrawals imply that they are dubious about delivering Karp’s funds, who granted a bounty of $300,000. Nevertheless, it appears that the attacker has denied Karp’s offer. Scorechain, the blockchain analytics company, tracked the stolen funds that were first converted into wrapped NXM (wNXM) before converting into wrapped Bitcoin, wrapped Ethereum, and finally BTC.
The company states that the hacker has drained approximately half of the funds and currently owns 147 BTC. Moreover, Scorechain also stated that the hacker had to fulfill the know-your-customer (KYC) process when selling the funds. This indicates that his identity should be displayed on some of the platforms. The other evidence that the attacker has denied the bounty came earlier today. He posted a transaction to Karp’s recognized ETH address demanding 4,500 ETH tokens to prevent selling the stolen and converted wNXM. With ETH’s price gaining momentum, this amount equals $2.8 million.
Nonetheless, Karp revealed on his Twitter account that the attacker’s address truly relates to the Nexus Foundation. Moreover, he notes that he doesn’t have enough ETH in possession. However, NXM sank by approximately 30% after the attack. The attacker clearly recognizes this dip, stating that he will withhold trading more tokens until the asset surges in value.
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