According to research by Chainalysis, in 2022 a vigilante hacker burned around $300,000 worth of bitcoin found in nearly a thousand addresses allegedly connected to Russian intelligence agencies via the OP_RETURN function.
The anonymous vigilante reportedly found 986 unique Bitcoin addresses between March 2022 and April 2022, which they claimed were being used by Russian security agencies.
They leaked the addresses using the text storage capabilities of the OP_RETURN function used to mark BTC transactions as invalid and burned the bulk of the BTC contained in the addresses.
The vigilante also sent some of the BTC to an address used to raise funds for Ukraine with the message:
“Help Ukraine with money from GRU Khakir.”
They used three other messages to mark the addresses:
- “GRU to SVR. Used for hacking!”
- “GRU to GRU. Used for hacking!”
- “GRU to FSB. Used for hacking!”
GRU is the Russian foreign military intelligence agency; the SVR is the foreign secret service; and the FSB is the Federal Security Service – all three are secret services.
The Russian link
Although the vigilantes provided no concrete evidence to support their claims of Russian intelligence connections through their OP_RETURN messages, Chainalysis’ investigation found that two of the addresses were mentioned in a now-deleted blog post by a Russian cybersecurity firm called HYAS.
According to the blog post, the three addresses — 1DLA46sXYps3PdS3HpGfdt9MbQpo6FytPm and 1L5QKvh2Fc86j947rZt12rX1EFrCGb2uPf — were used by the SVR to “buy infrastructure used in the infamous Solarwinds hack.”
In addition, a third address was confirmed to have Russian connections and was reportedly used by the GRU in a disinformation campaign against US politicians.
chain analysis said:
“The fact that the OP_RETURN messages appear to have been correct for three of the addresses lends credence to the claims against the others as well.”
“Pure Intentions”
The OP_RETURN hacker burned hundreds of thousands of dollars in an apparent attempt to “leak” the addresses to the public, according to Chainalysis.
“Our hypothesis is that the sender of OP_RETURN did this to make the transactions and related allegations more likely to be discovered.”
The research firm added that the fact that the hacker was willing to give up such a sum of money further supports their claims that those addresses were used by Russian security agencies.
Furthermore, after burning hundreds of BTC, the hacker began donating the rest to Ukraine to show their “pure intentions” and “support for the Ukrainian cause.”
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