According to BlockBeats, former security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed has been sentenced to three years in prison by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero for attacking two decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges and stealing over $12 million in cryptocurrency. This is the first conviction case against a smart contract hacker attack.
In July 2022, Ahmed launched an attack on a cryptocurrency exchange using false pricing data and stole approximately $9 million in cryptocurrency. He then attacked Nirvana Finance, exploiting a vulnerability in its smart contracts to purchase cryptocurrency at a price lower than the contract set and sell it to Nirvana at a higher price. This resulted in the theft of nearly all of Nirvana's $3.6 million funds, leading to its closure shortly after the hack.
Ahmed used complex techniques to launder the money, including token exchanges, cross-chain transfers, and converting funds into hard-to-track Monero. At the time of the incident, Ahmed, a senior security engineer, had special skills in reverse engineering smart contracts and blockchain auditing.
In addition to the three-year prison sentence, Ahmed was also sentenced to three years of supervised release. He is required to surrender approximately $12.3 million and a large amount of cryptocurrency, and pay over $5 million in compensation to the two exchanges.