Guess Who’s Hacking Now?

When China’s National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center claimed that the US government was tied to the theft of 127,000 BTC back in 2020, I didn’t take it too seriously. Everyone accuses everyone during trade wars.

But it turns out that a month earlier, well-known blockchain investigator ZachXBT had raised similar suspicions based on his own on-chain analysis. At the time, the media mostly ignored his statement, so it slipped under the radar.

When the same accusation comes from two independent analysts, it starts to look serious. Even Arkham believes that the addresses receiving the stolen BTC belong to the US government.

And another researcher claims the hackers exploited a vulnerability in the random-number generator used to create wallets for the mining pool that was robbed.

This is where it gets interesting.

• White-hat hackers from the Milk Sad group have been studying such vulnerabilities for a long time. They’ve discovered hundreds of thousands of weak addresses - not to steal the coins, but to draw attention to the problem and improve Bitcoin’s security.
• But white-hats aren’t the only ones who find vulnerabilities. There are also black-hat hackers - the ones who use them to take what isn’t theirs.

So which group should a government align itself with: the white hats or the black hats?

And if that’s the case… why did the government choose the black-hat playbook here? Because even a state cannot seize your bitcoin through legal means.