Iran’s cryptocurrency exchange Nobitex was hacked on Wednesday for around $90 million. On the surface, there was almost a daily abuse in an industry already dealing with $223 million Exchange Exploit earlier this month.
Under the surface, it was nothing. If we dig a little deeper, this is not just a cash grab, actually a political message that could be a hammer blow to one of the leading combatants in the Middle Eastern escalating conflict.
Gongeske Dalande, a hacker of a pro-Israel activist group, has shown their indifference to financial gain by essentially burning stolen funds into a series of inaccessible “vanity” wallets trapped in words like “terrorists.”
Politically motivated sabotage
“This appears to be a politically motivated act of sabotage rather than a financially motivated hack,” Oval co-founder Tom Robinson said in an interview. “The use of vanity addresses appears to be motivated by wanting to send a message to Nobitex and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.”
The group, meaning Persie’s name, leaked the source code of the exchange the following day, leaving the remaining tokens on the platform vulnerable to theft.
“I won’t pay bypass sanctions.” Gonjeshke Darande wrote on X along with a screenshot of a “Vanity” wallet that stores stolen funds.
The administration has long been under sanctions due to international concerns about its human rights records and attempts to develop nuclear weapons. The European Union introduced sanctions in 2011 and has since renewed them every year, strengthening them in the meantime. US sanctions date back to the Iranian revolution until 1979.
Israel said Iran has vowed to eliminate the Jewish state multiple times over the years, and is on the verge of the crisis of nuclear weapon development. Iran says the programme is purely peaceful. Last week, just before the Israeli air hit, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had violated its non-diffusion commitment.
Gonjeshke Darande’s tweet refers to allegations about Iran’s use of cryptocurrency to avoid sanctions, and Echo’s concerns Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Angus King filed it with former President Joe Biden in 2024.
Without Nobitex, Iran, already a country struck by oil and financial sanctions, could struggle to move capital in an era of intense conflict. It could undermine efforts to mobilize and launch attacks on Israel.
The truth about the vanity wallet
There was some debate about the vanity wallet. Can the group access the filched token or have they been burned forever?
“There’s virtually no attackers actually control these addresses,” Hacken security researcher Yehor Rudytsia told Coindesk.
Rudytsia said that a private key that uses a private key to unlock to create a vanity address is “a computational trivial task and can take place in micro/milliseconds.” However, you will need to try up to 2¹⁵² to find a 26-character private key. “It’s actually impossible to find a private key that maps to a public address like this.”
This means that you’ve run out of money.
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