Suspected transfers on Ethereum and Tron for the Bitcoin Lightning FixedFloat exchange

0
162

Recently, the Bitcoin Lightning FixedFloat exchange has recorded “suspicious” movements of 3 million dollars towards Ethereum and Tron. Furthermore, the website has been declared inactive for “technical work” from the early afternoon hours of April 2nd.

Let’s see all the details below. 

Anomalous transactions on the Lightning FixedFloat exchange: $3 million moved from Bitcoin to Ethereum and Tron

As anticipated, the security company CertiK has reported to CoinDesk that in the last day “suspicious” transactions totaling over 3 million dollars have been detected coming from the Bitcoin Lightning-based exchange FixedFloat. 

The funds have been transferred to Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT) on wallets located on the Ethereum and Tron networks, respectively. CertiK has defined the activity as an “exploit” in an email.

According to the company, about 2 million dollars of the funds have been deposited in eXch. So a behavior similar to the incident that occurred on February 16 with FixedFloat, while another 100k USDT has been deposited in a Binance wallet on Tron.

The FixedFloat website has been declared inactive for “technical work” since the early afternoon hours of April 2nd. There have been no comments on withdrawals from social media profiles and FixedFloat’s last post on X dates back to March 31st.

We remind you that FixedFloat is an automated service for exchanging cryptocurrencies and tokens that leverages Bitcoin Lightning. That is, the network built on top of the main Bitcoin blockchain that uses micropayment channels for faster and cheaper transactions.

A customer service representative from FixedFloat has confirmed that the exchange has experienced a technical error. However, they have not released any comments regarding the suspicious transfer activity.

The support staff, through a live chat, stated the following: 

“We have encountered some minor technical issues and have activated technical work mode. At the moment, we cannot provide a precise estimate of the recovery time.”

The $26 million violation against FixedFloat 

Already a month ago, the FixedFloat exchange had suffered a breach revealing a loss of 26 million dollars in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

Blockchain security companies confirmed that the hacker had already started laundering the funds through various cryptocurrency exchange platforms like cryptocurrencies such as eXch.cx and HiTBTC.

The FixedFloat team confirmed the attack on February 18 after various blockchain investigators reported suspicious fund movements. In a post on X, the decentralized exchange refused to release a public comment on the issue.

Users have reported blocked transactions and missing funds on the decentralized platform since February 17, posting complaints on the platform’s X profile. 

According to on-chain data, the hacker drained over 21 BTC worth 1700 million dollars and 5 ETH worth 18 million dollars. Unfortunately, FixedFloat is often used by hackers trying to recycle funds.

Even the official FixedFloat website was inactive and displayed an error message on all its pages, stating that technical work was in progress and that the site would be back online soon. 

The blockchain security company PeckShield has revealed that the hacker has transferred most of the stolen ETH to the eXch exchange. Others, such as Officer’s Notes, a Web3 threat researcher, have discovered that the hacker has also moved funds to HitBTC.

According to DeFi Rekt, seven major cryptographic exploits and hacks have already occurred recently, with PlayDapp and Duelbuts among the victims.