Two hacker groups were known for the targeting cryptocurrency exchanges. Together they are accounted for 60 percent of the hacks worldwide. Criminals pursued not only the financial goals. One of the groups is reportedly tied to Mikhail Brodsky, a businessman and politician from Kiev, Ukraine.

Сhainalysis investigation team has dived into the world of the crypto exchanges hacking. They published a report with their findings. Among others they determined that majority of attacks were performed by no more than two criminal groups. They named the groups ‘Alpha’ and ‘Beta’. Сhainalysis came to assumption that ‘Alpha’ is far more bigger and better organized that ‘Beta’. According to the analysts ‘Alpha’ is interested not only in stealing assets but is gathering information which may increase their influence. Meanwhile ‘Beta’ group is hacking only to steal the assets.

It is determined that ‘Alpha’ team is meticulously hiding traces of the intrusion. The stolen assets get through 15000 transactions before they will be exchanged for fiat currency. ‘Beta’, in contrast, use only about 5000 of transactions. Beta tends to keep stolen funds in crypto six to eighteen months. ‘Alpha’ gets all stolen assets in cash in about 30 days.

It was noticed that ‘Beta’ team is tracked back to Ukraine. Mikhail Brodsky, a businessman and politician is known to employ hackers. The owner of the ‘Obozrevatel’ news site used them to pump up the unsolicited traffic to his site. Since 2011 there were speculations that he is involved in hacker attacks. Recently it became known that Mikhail Brodsky has used the former officer of the SSU Nikolay Melnichenko to accomplish an industrial espionage. Media is reporting that Mikhail Brodsky hacker team to hack the servers in Australia to divert traffic. It strikes as a coincidence that in Australia they also tried but failed to launch background crypto mining.

Experts are not ready to pinpoint that case as a work of ‘Beta’ team as well as with any other known criminal groups. “Yes we had the media request about Brodsky. Journalists pointed to Сhainalysis and attached few screenshots of conversations of a customer with some hackers. Indirectly they presume that it is about Brodsky. It is a lot of media hype about him recently. Brodsky well may be one of the ‘investors’ of hacking team. We got the request and have to react but this question is up to our superiors” – said the source in the Cyberpolice of Ukraine.