US court hands down historic sentence for smart contract hacker

A US tribunal has sentenced Shakeeb Ahmed to 3 years successful situation for hacking 2 abstracted decentralized crypto exchanges and stealing integer assets worthy implicit $12 million, according to an April 12 statement from the US Department of Justice.

The sentencing marks the archetypal clip idiosyncratic has been convicted for hacking a smart contract.

US lawyer Damian Williams said:

“No substance however caller oregon blase the hack, this Office and our instrumentality enforcement partners are committed to pursuing the wealth and bringing hackers to justice. And arsenic today’s condemnation shows, clip successful situation — and forfeiture of each the stolen crypto — is the inevitable effect of specified destructive hacks.”

Ahmed was besides ordered to forfeit astir $12.3 cardinal and a important quantity of crypto and wage implicit $5 cardinal successful restitution to the unnamed crypto speech and Nirvana.

The hacks

In 2022, Ahmed hacked the astute contracts of 2 decentralized crypto exchanges, including Nirvana and an unnamed protocol, for a important magnitude of a integer asset.

The DOJ said Ahmed manipulated pricing information connected the unnamed level to siphon astir $9 cardinal successful inflated fees and withdrew the funds successful crypto. Subsequently, Ahmed agreed to instrumentality astir $7.5 cardinal nether the information that the speech refrains from involving instrumentality enforcement.

Shortly after, Ahmed targeted Nirvana Finance, stealing astir $3.6 million. According to the DOJ, Ahmed exploited Nirvana’s astute contracts to acquisition crypto astatine little prices from the speech and sold it astatine higher prices.

Despite the speech offering a $600,000 bounty, Ahmed demanded $1.4 million, starring to a stalemate and the retention of each stolen funds, culminating successful the exchange’s closure.

Subsequently, Ahmed laundered the stolen integer assets utilizing blase techniques specified arsenic token-swap transactions and precocious crypto mixers similar Samourai Whirlpool.

At the clip of these thefts, Ahmed was a elder information technologist for an unnamed planetary exertion company.

The station US tribunal hands down historical condemnation for astute declaration hacker appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.