In a stunning revelation, blockchain analytics firm Arkham has exposed the largest cryptocurrency heist in mining history, involving the Chinese mining pool LuBian.
In December 2020, hackers stole 127,426 BTC, valued at $3.5 billion at the time. With Bitcoin’s price surge, the stolen assets are now worth an astonishing $14.5 billion. Remarkably, neither LuBian nor the hackers publicly disclosed the incident until Arkham’s findings.
At its peak in 2020, LuBian controlled nearly 6% of Bitcoin’s global hashrate, operating facilities in China and Iran. The breach occurred on December 28, 2020, when hackers drained over 90% of the pool’s Bitcoin from its wallets. The following day, an additional $6 million in BTC and USDT was siphoned through an address on the Bitcoin Omni network.
In a desperate attempt to mitigate losses, LuBian transferred its remaining funds to reserve wallets on December 31. The company even embedded pleas to the hackers via Bitcoin’s OP_RETURN function, sending 1,516 transactions costing 1.4 BTC, begging for the return of the stolen assets. These efforts proved futile.
Arkham’s analysis suggests the breach stemmed from a critical vulnerability in LuBian’s private key generation algorithm, which was susceptible to brute-force attacks. This flaw likely allowed hackers to gain unauthorized access to the pool’s wallets.
The hacker has retained the entire stolen sum, and due to Bitcoin’s meteoric rise, their wallet is now valued at $14.5 billion. This makes the perpetrator the 13th largest Bitcoin holder globally, highlighting the unprecedented scale of the heist.
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The LuBian hack underscores the vulnerabilities in even the most prominent crypto operations and raises questions about the security practices of mining pools during Bitcoin’s early boom years. As the stolen funds remain untouched, the crypto community watches closely to see if the hacker will attempt to move or liquidate their massive holdings.
