Those affected lost between $150,000 and $2 million.
Fifty Russian customers of non-custodial decentralized wallet Atomic Wallet have reportedly launched a class-action lawsuit against it after falling victim to a recent $100 million breach.
Some believe that North Korean hackers from the Lazarus Group were responsible for the heist. However, Boris Feldman (who coordinated the victim's efforts) believes that Ukrainians may have been involved in the attack.
Working to recover lost assets
According to recent reports, fallen Atomic Wallet users have teamed up with German lawyer Max Gutbrod and Boris Feldman, co-founder of Moscow-based firm Destra Legal. The former said they represent around 50 clients who lost between $150,000 and $2 million. Their total losses are around $12 million.
“We are working to recover assets for our customers and will file a class action lawsuit against Atomic Wallet,” Gutbrod said. “They did not provide any information about the hack to our customers and did not report it to the police.”
Additionally, Destra Legal has partnered with blockchain analytics experts Match Systems to conduct separate investigations on behalf of the aforementioned victims.
Initially, rumors suggested that a North Korean hacking group was behind the Atomic Wallet breach, which allowed bad actors to steal around $100 million in digital currency. However, Feldman has a different take, suggesting that Ukrainian hackers may have been involved.
It is worth mentioning that since the outbreak of military conflict in February last year, the use of cryptocurrencies has surged in both Russia and Ukraine.
Feldman outlined, “Since the war, the use of cryptocurrencies has increased significantly. A lot of people left the country and used cryptocurrencies to transfer and store money.”
Controversy surrounding the vulnerability
In early June this year, the decentralized crypto wallet (with a user base of over 5 million) fell victim to cybercriminals. Many customers complained that their accounts had been hacked, and some claimed that they had lost millions of dollars worth of digital assets.
Atomic Wallet was not initially that transparent with its customers, providing an update two weeks after the attack. The team behind the entity said that less than 0.1% of its customers were affected: a claim that not many believed.
A Twitter (X) user claims that he lost more than 1 BTC due to an Atomic Wallet glitch, urging the platform to return his stolen assets.
It is worth mentioning that hackers used the services of Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), to launder money. Previously, they used 1INCH to convert assets into USDT.
According to some sources, bad actors also sent millions of stolen XRP tokens to centralized exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, KuCoin, etc. #Atomic #诉讼