Indexed Finance ‘identifies’ attacker behind $16 million hack

The DeFi protocol was hacked on Thursday, with the attacker allegedly stealing $16 million

Indexed Finance, a decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol that allows token holders to track market indexes, has reportedly unmasked the hacker behind last week’s attack.

On Thursday, the DeFi protocol announced that it had suffered a flash loan attack in which the attacker made off with $16 million. After flooding the protocol with new assets and impacting prices, the hacker allegedly minted new tokens worth millions.

In an update given after the attack, the Indexed team said the hack “was a pretty devastating one” and affected the DEFI5 and CC10 indices. The post mortem report also gave the address that had been used to steal the funds as 0xba5ed1488be60ba2facc6b66c6d6f0befba22ebe.

Attacker unmasked

In the hours after the attack, Indexed Finance asked the hacker to keep 10% of the funds and return the rest. But after this offer expired and after an ultimatum to have 100% of the stolen funds returned passed, the team revealed it had made links that identified the hacker.

“We have identified the Indexed attacker and found links to exchanges. We are now presenting an ultimatum,” IndexedDAO member Laurence Day said on Saturday.

The team went on to reveal that though missed at first, investigations into the attack had shown the attacker used accounts at crypto exchanges FTX and Kraken to fund their wallet. Both exchanges require users to complete know your customer checks; something that Indexed Finance was able to dig into to unmask the face behind the $16 million heist.

“In the minutes before the deadline elapsed, @ZetaZeroes made changes to his accounts that have made us realise at the last minute that the attacker is significantly younger than we thought,” the protocol wrote.

While the identity of the hacker has been ascertained, Indexed Finance has put a “hold” on releasing further details as an internal discussion goes on about how best to proceed given the age of the hacker.

It is not clear what Indexed Finance plans to do, including whether they’ll be seeking help from law enforcement.

In the market, the NDX token continues to face downward pressure having tanked 7% in the past 24 hours. As of writing, the token was trading around $2.94 against the US dollar.