$400K: Hacker Makes Off With Stellar Lumens in BlackWallet Theft

An unidentified thief has reportedly stolen more than $400,000 in Stellar lumens after hacking the digital wallet provider BlackWallet.

According to cybersecurity reearcher Kevin Beaumont, the attacker hijacked BlackWallet’s domain name system (DNS) server over the weekend, adding a piece of code which transferred any deposits of 20 or more lumens into another wallet.

Bleeping Computer reported that the attacker secured nearly 670,000 lumens, worth about $444,000 at press time.

Shortly after stealing the lumens, the hackers began moving the funds out of the wallet they were being stored in. Just under 100 lumens remained in the wallet as of 7:30 p.m. UTC Monday.

A reddit user claiming to be Blackwallet’s creator said in a statement that his hosting provider account had been compromised, which led to the hack. He went on to say he had contacted his provider and asked for the site to be taken down.

As of press time, BlackWallet was inaccessible.

The site’s creator said a large amount of the stolen funds were sent to an account at the cryptocurrency exchange Bittrex. While he tried to contact the exchange, it is unclear whether Bittrex has frozen the stolen funds.

In the statement, the creator said:

“I am sincerely sorry about this and hope that we will get the funds back. I am in talks with my hosting provider to get as much information about the hacker and will see what can be done with it.”

Broken lock image via Shutterstock