Vitalik Buterin: Blackmail Is Behind ETH $ 5.0M Transaction Fees

[Bitcoinmoon12]

In the past few days, a user has spent $ 5.2 million on fees to make just two transactions and one of them for only $ 130! And now, a third transaction was made by another user, albeit for a mere $ 500,000.

Vitalik Buterin – the co-founder of Ethereum – is currently speaking out about these transactions, explaining that they could be part of a complex extortion scheme.

On June 12, Chinese media outlet Chainnews reported that analyst firm PeckShield concluded that the millions of dollars in fee chain was paid by hackers seeking to redeem a cryptocurrency exchange.

The report speculates that the exchange was compromised during a phishing attack, allowing hackers to gain control over many of the platform’s operating rights, including its servers.

Researchers believe the hackers are threatening to empty the exchange wallets, if they are not paid for bribes, with PeakShield claiming that 21,000 ETH is still in the wallet under the hacker’s control.

Source: Vitalik Buterin: Blackmail Is Behind ETH $ 5.0M Transaction Fees

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[asriloni]

Is that mean the party who have been controlling the exchange wallets have been feeling panicked and sent a small transactions with million dollars as the fees? if that was true and this could be a human error even it's also caused by the scammer.

[joshua123]

Thats a huge allegation but probably Vitalik will deny this. But it is logical to blame it on him? Think about it, he is the founder of ethereum and something as small issue like this could be a fud over eth network. I believe this is just a bias fudding to them so some people can buy eth for price drop.

I assume the one did this is a group of whales that threatning the exchange. There are three times fees were send with huge value already.

[smyslov]

Things are becoming very clear now, I believe that this could be part of extortion attempt, it's very indigenous, coming from the horse mouth or the developer of Ethereum, but there should be an official announcement regarding this, because we are talking of very huge amount, and Vitalik is not yet sure of his statement, we will have more on this in the coming days.

[Mianae]

Or rather this could be some sort of money laundry scheme by the sender. He could make this a means of sending money to a given mining pool to get back either stolen funds or funds he can't spend directly from his wallet. Eth cofounder shouldn't be blamed for this. Cryptocurrency is decentralized he doesn't have control over people's funds.

[kapalmabur]

if it was true that yesterday's news was someone's own fault, then Ethereum was confirmed to only be affected by FUD,
but why did all users say that the Ethereum platform FEE was expensive?

[patz22]

That is very alarming if so, well, they should at least let us know about that exchange in that way, traders and users of that exchange will be aware unless it is like SAFU of binance, regarding the article/source, is it true? OR I mean, are there supporting facts on it? Just wondering.

[r32godzilla]

I was sure that behind these super high fees is something illegal because I do not believe that someone who owns such amount of money is so stupid . But, it is cool that we can see it transparently in the blockchain .

[tabas]

if it was true that yesterday's news was someone's own fault, then Ethereum was confirmed to only be affected by FUD,

FUD? the news is true and it's actually a transaction that became controversial in the Etherum network.

but why did all users say that the Ethereum platform FEE was expensive?

Because it's expensive.
Check the link and calculate how much fee they've paid for a very small transaction.
Ethereum user pays $2.6M fee to send $130 in digital currency

[Botnake]

I don't believe in this article, on the exchange related example, I don't think one would pay for the bribe knowing the hackers are in control of the exchange, that's not a smart thing to do, if hackers will empty the exchange, they can do so, so why take a smaller amount when they can empty all the exchange money? doesn't make sense for me. 

[judeafante]

I don't believe in this article, on the exchange related example, I don't think one would pay for the bribe knowing the hackers are in control of the exchange, that's not a smart thing to do, if hackers will empty the exchange, they can do so, so why take a smaller amount when they can empty all the exchange money? doesn't make sense for me. 

I agree something is not right here if there hacks then they owed everything they can transfer everything in whatever wallet they want, there should be some explanation on this, can you bribe someone while wasting all his funds, how can he pay you when all the funds are nowhere to be found, doesn't make sense to me either.

[elementaryOS]

I don't believe in this article, on the exchange related example, I don't think one would pay for the bribe knowing the hackers are in control of the exchange, that's not a smart thing to do, if hackers will empty the exchange, they can do so, so why take a smaller amount when they can empty all the exchange money? doesn't make sense for me.  

I agree something is not right here if there hacks then they owed everything they can transfer everything in whatever wallet they want, there should be some explanation on this, can you bribe someone while wasting all his funds, how can he pay you when all the funds are nowhere to be found, doesn't make sense to me either.

Don't know why but this news sound very suspicion on both this unknown hacker and the exchange that got hacked. Very convenient for the exchange in the question could scoff off by saying "They got us under extortion scheme, we're the victim here, trust us!" Even when hackers in control of the exchange wallet, that's still not good because their move, any money flow will be monitor. Any attempt to sell that dirty crypto will be notify and BAN in most legit exchanges. Since it becomes harder for the hacker to launder the money from hacked crypto, that why someone in cahoots with the unknown hacker, with a new scheme as we saw. Anyone here knows which exchange they were talking about in the news?

[maxreish]

Literally, this is absurd. But doing this twice with the same ethereum address makes it more suspicious and makes sense that this has something to do with extortion. Others claim that it was a software bug with that particular exchange but whatever it is, this huge transaction fees will definitely cause some trust issues.
 
 Found this tweet from Vitalik;
 

The theory: hackers captured partial access to exchange key; they can't withdraw but can send no-effect txs with any gasprice. So they threaten to "burn" all funds via txfees unless compensated.

 The motive is really intentional.

[thanhloancvn]

As you know, the wallet address that sent $ 130 but paid up to over $ 2.6M has a lot of transactions unlike normal wallets.
In my opinion, this is a wallet of an exchange that has been hacked. Hackers require exchanges manager to pay them money or some kind of cryptocurrency unless they will send ETH to other wallet addresses. Perhaps the exchange manager did not agree and Hacker despite not being able to send ETH out of the exchange because there must be enough signatures of the managers (So the hacker could not transfer Coin from the exchange), paid a very high fee, causing the exchange to be damaged.

[Febo]

Vitalik Buterin: Blackmail Is Behind ETH $ 5.0M Transaction Fees

So he is saying that criminals use Etehreum? Does that means that Eteherum will be desisted from most of the exchanges?

[ene1980]

~
On June 12, Chinese media outlet Chainnews reported that analyst firm PeckShield concluded that the millions of dollars in fee chain was paid by hackers seeking to redeem a cryptocurrency exchange.

The report speculates that the exchange was compromised during a phishing attack, allowing hackers to gain control over many of the platform’s operating rights, including its servers.

Researchers believe the hackers are threatening to empty the exchange wallets, if they are not paid for bribes, with PeakShield claiming that 21,000 ETH is still in the wallet under the hacker’s control.

I did not see this coming, when i saw that transaction i thought it was a mistake by someone but when you have repeated instances of the same mistake then it is possible that it is done on purpose and which exchange are they talking about and what are the demands the hackers have. If the hackers keep on emptying the wallets then what is the bargaining power they will be having and i am not sure where this is leading.