French authorities arrest Duo in connection with $14.4 million Holograph hack

Investigations into a multi-billion dollar hack into the omnichain tokenization platform Holograph have begun to yield results. French authorities have arrested two people who may have been involved in the attack.

According to a tweet from the official account of Holograph X, the Italian Directorate of Anti-Mafia Investigations, in collaboration with multiple enforcement agencies, such as Europol, the French Office for the Prevention of Cybercrime and the Search Brigade and Paris intervention, they have arrested linked suspects. to the Holograph hack, seizing assets and electronics as part of the arrests.

The Holograph Hack

On June 13, a cybercriminal exploited a vulnerability in operator Holograph’s contract and minted 1 billion HLG tokens worth $14.4 million. HLG is the protocol’s native token. Within hours of the attack, the hacker converted the stolen assets to Tether (USDT) and wiped out the stablecoins.

Chain analysts found data that suggested a rogue developer had executed the attack after making preparations about a month earlier. The wallet address that received the minted supply was funded 26 days before the exploit.

The Holograph team quickly alerted law enforcement and investigations have been ongoing.

Law enforcement and cyber investigators traced the attacks to two men in their thirties who reside in Italy. They were arrested and detained on August 9 and will soon be extradited to France to face charges. Holograph said their names could not be released on the instructions of the French authorities and for the sake of further investigations.

“The broader investigation is still very fluid – the team will share more information on asset recovery for the Holograph ecosystem as proceedings unfold,” the protocol added.

62% HLG increase

The Holograph attack affected the value of HLG as the token fell 80% from $0.014 to a low of $0.0029 in less than ten hours. The token’s market capitalization was reduced from $22 million to $4.8 million, and the value of the stolen storage was reduced from $14.4 million to $7 million.

While HLG’s market capitalization is currently below $3.44 billion, the token has reacted to news of the arrests, surging 62% from $0.0016 to $0.0026. At the time of writing, HLG was around $0.0024, up 41% in the last 24 hours.

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