Security News > 2024 > April > Ex-Amazon engineer gets 3 years for hacking crypto exchanges

Former Amazon security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced to three years in prison for hacking two cryptocurrency exchanges in July 2022 and stealing over $12 million.

The breached entities are Nirvana Finance, a decentralized crypto exchange, and an unnamed exchange on the Solana blockchain platform that Ahmed hacked using his smart contract reverse engineering and blockchain audit skills.

"No matter how novel or sophisticated the hack, this Office and our law enforcement partners are committed to following the money and bringing hackers to justice. And as today's sentence shows, time in prison - and forfeiture of all the stolen crypto - is the inevitable consequence of such destructive hacks."

In the first attack, Ahmed targeted the undisclosed crypto exchange by using a smart contract to introduce false pricing data, leading to inflated fees of around $9 million.

Ahmed used several cryptocurrency mixers to obscure the digital trail of the stolen funds, including Samourai Whirlpool, the Solana and Ethereum blockchains, and foreign exchanges to convert the millions he had stolen into Monero-a cryptocurrency known for enhanced privacy and anonymity.

US sanctions crypto exchanges used by Russian darknet market, banks.

News URL

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ex-amazon-engineer-gets-3-years-for-hacking-crypto-exchanges/