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@ Sooly⚡️سولي 🇱🇧🇧🇪🇦🇪🇦🇴
2025-06-18 09:17:40
#Nostr News:
The $81 Million Breach That Ripped Open Iran’s Crypto Curtain
Iran’s top crypto exchange just got gutted. $81 million vanished in hours, leaving behind a trail of mocking wallet addresses and a geopolitical cyber war turned financial.
What Happened
On June 18, 2025, #Nobitex, #Iran ’s largest crypto exchange, was hacked. An estimated $48–$81.7 million in digital assets were stolen: mostly USDT on the Tron network. The culprit? A hacktivist group with Israeli ties called Gonjeshke Darande (Predatory Sparrow). Their message: This isn’t about profit. It’s about punishment.
And yes, they left a calling card:
TKFuckiRGCTerroristsNoBiTEXy2r7mNX
They didn’t just empty wallets. They made a statement.
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The Attack
This wasn’t a sloppy job. It was surgical.
- Hot Wallet Breach: Nobitex’s operational wallets (always online for liquidity) were compromised.
- Multi-Chain Drain: While Tron took the main hit, attackers also looted #Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and EVM-compatible chains.
- Vanity Addresses: Provocative addresses were used to collect funds, taunting Iran’s regime with every transaction.
- Speed: Tron’s low fees and fast finality let attackers move funds within minutes. Detection came too late.
According to blockchain sleuths like ZachXBT, the whole operation spanned hours, not days.
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The Motive
Predatory Sparrow claimed responsibility hours after the attack, accusing Nobitex of:
“Helping Iran evade sanctions and finance terror.”
This comes just a day after they reportedly hit Bank Sepah, a state-owned bank tied to Iran’s IRGC. The message is clear: Iran’s financial infrastructure is a battlefield, and #crypto is no longer a neutral zone.
They also threatened to leak Nobitex’s internal data and source code, putting remaining assets and user privacy at extreme risk.
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Nobitex’s Response
The exchange responded with a standard corporate yawn:
- Confirmed: A “security issue” in hot wallets and reporting systems.
- Assured: Cold wallets are safe. User funds will be reimbursed.
- Paused: Services were suspended. Investigation underway.
But the damage was done. Thousands of Iranians were locked out. Trust is now as frozen as their accounts.
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The Bigger Picture
This isn’t just a hack, it’s a geopolitical front line in bytes and blocks.
- Cyber warfare is evolving: Israel and Iran have moved from nuclear centrifuges to exchange servers.
- Centralized Exchanges are honeypots: Hot wallets are still the Achilles’ heel. Operational convenience > security. Until it’s not.
- In 2025 alone, crypto hacks have cost over $2.1 billion, with hot wallet compromises being the leading vector.
This breach makes Nobitex the largest centralized crypto casualty in the Middle East to date.
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What It Exposes
1. Iranian surveillance risk: Exchanges like Nobitex aren’t just trading platforms, they’re state-adjacent financial proxies.
2. False security narratives: “Cold wallets are fine” doesn’t help when hot wallet infrastructure and internal reporting systems are breached.
3. The illusion of sovereignty: You don’t control your money if you don’t control your keys. Nobitex users just learned that lesson the hard way.
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Final Thought
When state actors and ideological soldiers collide on blockchain rails, users become collateral damage. This isn’t about bugs in code, it’s about broken trust, imperial backdoors, and the fragility of centralized infrastructure.
The message from Predatory Sparrow is simple:
If you build tools for tyranny, don’t be surprised when someone pulls the plug.
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Sigh. NYKNYC