$282 million in Bitcoin and Litecoin stolen via Trezor impersonation scam

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Bitcoin breaking news: A user was deceived by a Trezor support scam and shared their 12-word seed phrase, resulting in a $282 million theft of Bitcoin and Litecoin. The attackers used the THORChain bridge to transfer the funds and convert them into Monero. ZeroShadow confirmed this was a social engineering incident, not a security vulnerability. The company successfully froze $700,000 in stolen Bitcoin within 20 minutes.

ChainCatcher reports that a Bitcoin and Litecoin holder provided a 12-word mnemonic phrase to attackers impersonating Trezor support staff, resulting in the theft of approximately $282 million in assets, including about $139 million in Bitcoin and $153 million in Litecoin. Blockchain forensic firm ZeroShadow stated that the incident stemmed from a social engineering attack, not a compromise of wallet software or private key infrastructure. The stolen funds were split within minutes via the THORChain cross-chain bridge and converted into Monero through instant exchange services. ZeroShadow’s monitoring team identified and froze approximately $700,000 in funds within 20 minutes. Under the BIP39 standard, a 12-word mnemonic phrase contains approximately 128 bits of entropy, while a 24-word phrase contains 256 bits. Chainalysis estimates that up to 23% of all mined Bitcoin—amounting to millions of BTC—may be permanently inaccessible due to lost keys, caused by forgotten mnemonic phrases, damaged backups, or lack of inheritance planning.

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