Investigators Flag Suspected $106M Theft, $786K Solana Bot Drain

An unidentified European Union entity may have lost more than $106 million from cryptocurrency exchange accounts on Sunday, blockchain investigator ZachXBT said, according to Cointelegraph. ZachXBT reported the suspected stolen funds were pulled out in USDC and USDT, then shuffled across several cryptocurrencies and chains, and he traced 11 wallet addresses tied to the movement. He said the pattern of transfers did not resemble tactics used by North Korea's Lazarus Group, though the entity involved, the exchanges hit and the attacker's identity remain unknown.

In a separate incident, a wallet tied to King, a Solana-based arbitrage bot that buys crypto in one market to sell in another, may have lost around $786,000 on Monday, Onchain Lens said, as cited by Cointelegraph. Onchain Lens pointed to the speed of the transfers and the cross-chain routing as signs funds may have been deliberately obscured, raising the possibility of a wallet compromise that has not been verified.

Cointelegraph linked both cases to broader scrutiny of exchange security following a $6.3 billion Binance hack on October 29, which the FBI pinned on the North Korea-linked group TraderTraitor, tied to Lazarus, and which the outlet called the largest crypto theft on record. The scale and cause of the $106 million incident, along with the reason for the suspected King bot drain, remain unconfirmed.