Poupança de vida de casal da Carolina do Norte é completamente eliminada em enorme roubo de XRP

Hackers liquidam fundos de aposentadoria em ataque criptográfico direcionado

O Golpe Digital

Investidores de XRP acordaram com contas vazias após invasão coordenada. Criminosos exploraram vulnerabilidades de segurança para drenar carteiras digitais durante a noite - sem rastreamento, sem reembolso.

Lições Amargas

Especialistas em cibersegurança alertam sobre armazenamento em exchanges versus carteiras frias. A vítima mantinha todos os tokens em plataforma online - erro clássico que bancos tradicionais nunca cometeriam, mas hey, quem precisa de regulamentação quando você tem 'tecnologia disruptiva'?

O mercado de criptomoedas continua sua dança volátil enquanto investidores aprendem da maneira mais difícil: na terra das finanças descentralizadas, você é seu próprio banco - e seu próprio agente de segurança.

Ellipal blames cold-to-hot wallet confusion

Ellipal released a public statement on October 18 claiming its internal review showed that Brandon had entered his hardware wallet seed phrase into the Ellipal mobile app, turning what was supposed to be cold storage into a hot wallet.

In an email to him, the company explained that when a seed phrase is imported into a phone or tablet, the device stores the private keys, connecting it to the internet and destroying the safety layer that makes a cold wallet secure.

Brandon said he had the Ellipal app installed on both an iPhone and an iPad. The iPhone app had a blue background, which Ellipal told him represented a cold wallet. The iPad version showed an orange background, which meant it was hot.

Ellipal said that color difference mattered, emphasizing that their hardware devices are air-gapped, meaning they never connect to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or USB. The company said no thefts had ever come from its physical wallets and insisted the incident looked like user error. Still, the company admitted it couldn’t prove how the theft technically happened.

Brandon said he simply followed the app’s interface. “If the blue means cold and orange means hot, why wasn’t that made clearer?” he said in one of his YouTube videos. Ellipal hasn’t confirmed whether the color indicators failed or were misunderstood, but maintained that entering a seed phrase into an app immediately removes all protection.

ZachXBT traces stolen XRP across Tron and OTC brokers

On Sunday, on-chain sleuth ZachXBT posted a detailed thread on X (formerly Twitter) sharing how he identified the theft address by matching the transaction times and values shown in Brandon’s videos.

In his post, Zach said the attacker used Bridgers, the swap service previously called SWFT, to create more than 120 Ripple-to-Tron conversions on October 12. Some block explorers labeled the transactions as “Binance” because Bridgers routes its liquidity through the exchange.

According to Zach’s X thread, the stolen XRP was eventually consolidated on the Tron network in a wallet labeled TGF3hP5GeUPKaRJeWKpvF2PVVCMrfe2bYw, before being sent to multiple over-the-counter brokers tied to Huione, a Southeast Asian marketplace flagged in U.S. enforcement actions for handling illicit transfers.

Three days later, the funds had been reportedly scattered across countless addresses, making recovery practically impossible.

ZachXBT warned people to stay away from “crypto recovery” services, calling them scams that charge big fees for fake investigations. He said only fast reporting to legitimate investigators and compliant exchanges can sometimes help flag or freeze stolen funds.

“Once it’s bridged across chains and hits OTC desks, there’s almost no way back,” said Zach.

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