What hackers google for their crypto crimes?
2 min readHow out Documents According to a New York court, US authorities have arrested computer engineer Shakeeb Ahmed. The accusation: He is said to have stolen nine million US dollars by exploiting a decentralized exchange (DEX). What the documents also reveal: The hacker seemed overwhelmed with the situation himself, as evidenced by his Google searches immediately after the hack. Among other things, he wanted to determine how best to protect his stolen goods from the judiciary and the state. He didn’t seem to have considered this beforehand.
His search queries were sometimes “how do I stop the government from confiscating assets”, “can I cross national borders with crypto” or simply: “DeFi Hacks FBI”. He is also said to have searched for news about his crime to see if anyone was already on to him. After using the search engine to get an overview of possible consequences, he is said to have made an offer to DEX. He would return the funds, apart from 1.5 million USD, which he wanted to keep for demonstrating the vulnerability.
No mercy on DeFi hacks
The story is reminiscent of the DeFi platform Mango Markets hack, where the attacker promised to return stolen funds if the team refrained from prosecuting them. However, he did not escape charges of fraud and manipulation of goods. Ahmed met a similar fate. “It doesn’t matter if someone is stealing money from a bank or cheating on a decentralized crypto exchange. It’s all fraud, simple as that,” a judge explained in the filing.
In any case, the computer engineer is not a master thief. Ahmed did use a VPN (Virtual Private Network) during his attack. Apparently, however, he was still unable to remove his traces. He was therefore “not up to the task” of the US tax investigation department for cyber crimes, like this one statements explained.
However, Ahmed’s arrest is an isolated case. There are still a number of hacks in the DeFi sector, in which several million US dollars are lost and only very few perpetrators are caught. Sad overall balance of the past year: five billion US dollars in damage. After all: In general, the number of crypto crimes is falling, as a recent report on crypto crime shows.
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