$90 million gone: Who hacked Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange?

Hackers with possible links to Israel have wiped out more than $90 million from Nobitex, Iran’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, according to blockchain analytics firms.

The group that claimed responsibility for the hack revealed the ‘company’s full source code’ on Thursday.

“ASSETS LEFT IN NOBITEX ARE NOW ENTIRELY OUT IN THE OPEN,” the hacker group announced on its Telegram account.

Attack not ‘financially motivated’

The stolen funds were transferred to addresses carrying messages that criticised Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, AP reported.

The blog said the attack likely was not financially motivated, as the wallets in which the hackers had poured the money into “effectively burned the funds in order to send Nobitex a political message”.

Hacker group revealed

The hackers group, Gonjeshke Darande, which translates to “Predatory Sparrow” in Farsi, accused Nobitex of helping Iran’s government evade Western sanctions over the country's rapidly growing nuclear programme. The group also alleged that Nobitex transferred money to militants.

It came after the group said it had destroyed data in a cyberattack against Iran’s state-controlled Bank Sepah on Tuesday.

Elliptic said that relatives of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, were linked to the exchange and that sanctioned Revolutionary Guard operatives had used Nobitex.

It shared evidence that the exchange had sent and received funds from cryptocurrency wallets controlled by Iranian allies, including Yemen’s Houthis and Hamas, as news reports suggest.

Gonjeshke Darande has previously claimed responsibility for other high-level cyberattacks against Iran, including a 2021 operation that halted the operations of gas stations and a 2022 effort against a steel mill that sparked a large fire, as per the news agency.

Israel denies ties with hackers

Israeli media have widely reported that Gonjeshke Darande is linked to Israel, but the country’s government has never officially acknowledged ties to the group.

US Senators Elizabeth Warren and Angus King last year raised concerns about Iran’s use of cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions, AP said.