ChangeNOW prevents hackers from laundering $1.5 million in ALGO drained through a hack

The team behind ChangeNOW, one of the industry’s leading non-custodial crypto swap service, reports about the successful blocking of suspicious transactions related to the recent hacks of several Algorand users. The heist occurred between 19th to 21st of February and affected more than 12 accounts. A portion of stolen ALGO and USDC (Algorand) tokens was transferred to ChangeNOW, but the hackers’ plan was foiled due to the platform’s risk-prevention algorithms. 

Stolen ALGO value at over $3 million, most of those are safe

John Woods, the CTO of Algorand, has already assured the community members that the incident has been caused not by a technical malfunction, but rather a targeted attack. The heist is currently being investigated by the Algorand team, however, it still remains unclear what actually happened. 

All in all, the malefactors managed to drain 13.3 million ALGO, which is worth almost $3.6 million. After the attack took place, the value of ALGO has decreased by almost 6%, but is gradually regaining its standings now.

Source: CoinMarketCap

A few hack-related transactions ended up in ChangeNOW on 19th of February. Cryptodaily immediately contacted the exchange to find out that at least three transactions were halted: 600,000 USDC, 829,000 USDC, both on the Algorand network, and 300,000 ALGO, a combined value of $1.5 million.

Recovering stolen ALGO 

Now Algorand is working with each affected user individually to provide all necessary help. 

Meanwhile, ChangeNOW is keeping the intercepted ALGO and Algorand-based USDC and will further transfer them back to the compromised users in accordance with the platform’s return policies. 

ChangeNOW’s innerly developed AML system proved to be efficient once again since it helped detect suspicious activity quickly and handle the issue. Earlier, ChangeNOW’s risk-prevention measures have already helped recover $19 million in fraud and hack-related losses.