Paitun Monitoring: USDT was quickly exchanged for ETH after being stolen, and $2.3 million in assets were laundered

According to the alert from PeckShield security monitoring team, a serious wallet security incident occurred on December 23. Two user accounts were successfully hacked due to private key leakage, resulting in the theft of approximately $2.3 million worth of USDT stablecoins. This incident once again exposes the risks associated with improper private key management.

How Key Leakage Leads to Asset Loss Control

When a user’s wallet private key is obtained by an attacker, the entire account becomes completely uncontrolled. In this case, after gaining access, the attacker immediately took action to transfer out all USDT balances from the two compromised accounts. The process happened very quickly, leaving victims with extremely limited reaction time.

Rapid USDT to ETH Exchange Chain

After stealing USDT, the core issue for the attacker was how to conceal the funds. A clever approach is to quickly convert assets. In this incident, the attacker cashed out all stolen USDT into 757.6 ETH. This exchange process demonstrates the attacker’s deep understanding of liquidity and concealment of value.

Fully Obscuring Funds Using Mixing Tools

After obtaining ETH, the attacker did not hold it directly but used mixing protocols like TornadoCash to thoroughly launder the funds. These mixing tools can effectively break the traceability of on-chain fund flows, making it difficult for regulators and security firms to track the final destination of the funds. The entire process of theft, exchange, and concealment forms a complete attack chain.

This incident serves as a reminder for users to strengthen private key security management and avoid leaking key information under any circumstances.