Billionaire Mark Cuban's Metamask Hacked
Around $900,000 in cryptocurrency was allegedly stolen from a hot wallet owned by billionaire investor and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. The incident was initially detected by independent blockchain investigator Wazz on September 15th around 8 pm UTC. Their attention was drawn to unusual activity in one of Cuban's wallets, which he hadn't used for approximately five months.
Based on the transaction history visible on Etherscan, several batches of assets including USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT), and Lido Staked Ether (stETH) were abruptly withdrawn from the wallet within a brief 10-minute timeframe.
Complicating matters, an additional $2 million worth of USDC was subsequently withdrawn and sent to a different wallet, prompting suspicions that Mark Cuban might have been restructuring his assets.
However, Cuban later confirmed to DL News that he had accessed MetaMask after several months and hinted that the hacker or hackers may have been monitoring his activity, choosing an opportune moment to strike.
Cuban also disclosed that he had moved any remaining assets to Coinbase Custody, effectively verifying that the $2 million USDC transfer was initiated by him.
Regarding the security breach, community members promptly noted that instead of hackers monitoring Mark Cuban's activity, it's more likely that he took actions that resulted in the breach.
A few speculated that Cuban might have inadvertently approved a malicious transaction, while others argued that his private key could have been compromised, especially considering that the funds were directly moved out of the wallet.
Mark Cuban has experienced setbacks in the crypto market before.In June 2021, Cuban suffered losses, the exact amount undisclosed, in what he termed a "rug pull" when an algorithmic stablecoin project named Iron Finance collapsed following what appeared to be a bank run.
Reference:
Mark Cuban loses $870K in hot wallet hack (2023) Cointelegraph. Available at: https://cointelegraph.com/news/mark-cuban-hot-wallet-hacked
(Accessed: 16 September 2023).