Hackers do not usually take too long to adjust and regain the “pole position” when it comes to being prepared to bypass the newest security barriers presented by entities, pages, services, or organizations online. They are talented individuals or groups that continually develop their skills and find innovative ways to wreak havoc in people’s accounts, no matter what there is inside of them.
The crypto industry has provided these agents with the chance to make millions of dollars by taking advantage of poor security measures and people’s naivety, in some cases. Crypto hacks have been a problem ever since the assets became popular, and year after year, the frequency of cases and the amounts of funds stolen both increase.
As it turns out, there are two notorious hacker groups that have particularly harmed the crypto industry, having stolen a whopping $1 billion in cryptocurrencies, according to a report made by Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, quoted by widely known publication The Wall Street Journal on Monday, January 28th.
“Alpha” and “Beta” are Still Wreaking Havoc
The two hacker entities are named by Chainalysis as “Alpha” and “Beta,” and between the two, they have gotten the vast majority of funds taken off victims in the most recent cryptocurrency scams. Chainalysis’ chief economist, Philip Gradwell, thinks that both groups remain active at the moment of writing this piece.
There is a caveat in the report, however: Chainalysis seems to leave the door open to the possibility of being wrong in their take, and the firm has failed in its attempts to check the identities of the involved groups.
Get to Know the Two Groups
According to the published text, Alpha is categorized as “a giant, tightly controlled organization at least partly driven by non-monetary goals.” On the other hand, the Beta organization is portrayed as a smaller entity, without the same levels of organization. It is a “heavily sanctioned” association mostly focused on the money.”
The stolen money were, according to the report, transferred an average of around 5,000 times via online exchanges prior to their conversion to cash.
It is quite clear that despite their identities and modus operandi not being officially confirmed, the two hacking groups operate in a different manner. Alpha starts the process by transferring the digital assets from address to address almost immediately, whereas Beta can take as long as a year and a half to do so, after the social and public impact of the scam has faded.
Chainalysis report states that Alpha usually converts three quarters of the funds in cash within the first 30 days on average, while Beta does it with a proportion of around half within days after the mentioned waiting window.
It is not unheard that the funds are processed through regular, traditional exchanges. According to Gradwell, platforms with Anti Money Laundering schemes do not always identify suspicious activity or the reception of hacked proceedings after a considerable number of transfers.
By Andres Chavez
