BTCPay Server is offering a bounty for the return of bitcoin stolen from merchants last week, after attackers used stolen Lightning node credentials to drain hot wallets. The node provider is paying researchers for the disclosure and pointing victims toward cold storage while exchanges and law enforcement help trace the funds.
BTCPay Server said Tuesday it will fund a bounty for the return of bitcoin stolen from merchants last week, offering 10% of whatever is recovered up to a maximum of 3 BTC, worth roughly $190,000 at current prices. The offer is open to anyone with useful information, including the attacker.
If several reports lead to a recovery, BTCPay said the bounty will be split with the victims according to how much each lost and how useful the information proved. The project asked people to write to its security address and said secure channels are available on request.
Stolen LND credentials drained wallets
Attackers exploited the vulnerability last week to obtain credentials for LND, the most widely used software for running a Lightning node, and drained the hot wallets associated with it. Hardware-wallet maker Foundation and bitcoin publication Citadel21 both reported losing funds. Neither BTCPay nor the victims have published a total so far.
BTCPay also said exchanges, blockchain analytics firms and law enforcement have offered help tracing the money, and it urged affected merchants to report the theft to local police and to any service the funds are traced to.
AI-driven bug hunt led to the patch
The flaw came from the Bitcoin Red Team, a volunteer effort that began pointing AI models at bitcoin codebases this month and has filed thousands of findings across hundreds of projects, including the report that led to this patch. BTCPay is donating 0.21 BTC each to developer Craig Raw and to the Bitcoin Red Team fund for the responsible disclosure.
Meanwhile, BTCPay advised merchants to keep funds in cold storage and move excess out of hot wallets regularly, according to BTCPay: "especially during this period of rapid, AI-driven change."
Source: CoinDesk: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Crypto News and Price Data
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