The Iranian cryptocurrency Nobitex exchange was hacked on Wednesday for around $ 90 million, on the surface of an almost routine feat in an industry that has already dealt with an exploit in exchange for $ 223 million earlier this month.
Below the surface, it was anything but. Digging a little more deeply reveals that it was not just a cash jack, in fact, not a species at all, but a political message which could end up being a hammer blow to one of the main fighters of the increasing conflict in the Middle East.
The pirates, the pro-Israeli activist group Gonjeshke Darande, have demonstrated their indifference to the monetary gain by transferring the stolen funds to a series of inaccessible “vanity” portfolios such as “terrorist”, burning essentially these tokens forever.
Political motivation sabotage
“It seems to be a politically motivated sabotage act rather than a financially motivated hack,” said elliptical co-founder Tom Robinson in an interview. “The use of vanity addresses seems to be motivated by wanting to send a message to Nobitex and the body of the guards of the Islamic revolution.”
The group, whose name Farsi means Sparrow predatory, the next day has disclosed the source code of the exchange, leaving the remaining tokens on the vulnerable platform for theft.
“The bypass of sanctions does not pay.” Gonjeshke Darande wrote on X alongside screenshots of “vanity” portfolios storing stolen funds.
The regime has been under sanction for years due to international concerns about its human rights file and is trying to develop nuclear weapons. The European Union introduced sanctions in 2011 and renewed them every year since, even by strengthening them in the meantime. American sanctions date back to 1979 to the Iranian Revolution.
Israel said Iran, which has promised to eliminate the Jewish state over the years, was about to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says its program is purely peaceful. Last week, immediately before the air strikes of Israel, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had violated its non-proliferation commitments.
The tweet of Gonjeshke Darande refers to the allegations on the use of cryptocurrency by Iran to escape the sanctions, echoing the Senators Elizabeth Warren and Angus King raised to the former American president Joe Biden in 2024.
Without Nobitex, Iran, a nation already paralyzed by oil and financial sanctions, could find it difficult to move capital in a period of intense conflicts. This could weaken his efforts to mobilize and launch attacks in Israel.
The truth about vanity wallets
There have been discussions on vanity wallets. Does the group have access to the filmed tokens, or have they been burned forever?
There are “practically zero attackers with regard to these addresses,” said security researcher at Hacken at Coindesk Yehor Rudytsia.
The creation of vanity addresses with a private key to unlocking them “is a trivial task in calculation and can be performed in micro / milliseconds,” said Rudytsie. But finding the 26 -characters private key would require testing up to ~ 2¹⁵². “It is practically impractical to find the private key that maps such a public address.”
Which means that money has disappeared.
