Crooks stole around $112 million worth of XRP from Ripple’s co-founder

Crooks stole around $112 million worth of Ripple XRP from the crypto wallet of Ripple’s co-founder Chris Larsen.

This week, crooks stole around $112 million worth of the Ripple-focused cryptocurrency XRP from a crypto wallet belonging to the Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman Chris Larsen.

Larsen pointed out that the hackers compromised his personal XRP accounts, while the @Ripple was not impacted.

Yesterday, there was unauthorized access to a few of my personal XRP accounts (not @Ripple) – we were quickly able to catch the problem and notify exchanges to freeze the affected addresses. Law enforcement is already involved. https://t.co/T3HtKSlzLg

— Chris Larsen (@chrislarsensf) January 31, 2024

Larsen revealed that his company was able to quickly detect the fraudulent activity and freeze the affected address with the support of other exchanges. The Ripple’s co-founder immediately notified law enforcement.

“Larsen wrote the post less than an hour after the well-known crypto security researcher ZachXBT broke news of the hack.” states Techcrunch.co that first reported the news.

The crypto expert ZachXBT first discovered the hack and reported that the crooks attempted to launder the stolen funds through multiple crypto exchanges and platforms, including MEXC, Gate, Binance, Kraken, OKX, HTX, and HitBTC.

TechCrunch highlighted the impossibility of determining whether the compromised account actually belongs to Ripple.

The post includes an analysis of the hacked wallet through on-chain data from XRPScan and attempts to shed light on its link with Larsen’s account.

However a Ripple’s spokesperson confirmed that Ripple was not impacted.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, XRP)