Security Company: $282 million in Bitcoin and...｜LTC, social engineering attack

According to Bitcoin.com, a Bitcoin and Litecoin holder provided a 12-word mnemonic phrase to an attacker impersonating Trezor support, resulting in approximately $282 million in assets being transferred, including $139 million in Bitcoin and $153 million in Litecoin. Blockchain forensics company ZeroShadow stated that the incident stemmed from a social engineering attack and was not due to a breach of wallet software or private key infrastructure.

The stolen funds were split via the THORChain cross-chain bridge within minutes and converted to Monero through an instant exchange service. The ZeroShadow monitoring team flagged and froze approximately $700,000 in funds within 20 minutes. Under the BIP39 standard, a 12-word mnemonic phrase contains 128 bits of entropy, while a 24-word mnemonic phrase contains 256 bits of entropy. Chainalysis estimates that up to 23% of mined Bitcoin is permanently inaccessible due to lost keys, involving millions of BTC, with reasons including forgotten mnemonic phrases, damaged backups, and lack of inheritance plans.