TechFlow news, March 7 — According to on-chain investigator ZachXBT's disclosure yesterday, a civil forfeiture complaint filed by U.S. law enforcement revealed the reason behind the theft of approximately $150 million (283 million XRP) from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen in January 2024. The incident stemmed from Larsen storing his private keys in the LastPass password manager, which suffered a data breach in 2022.
The document shows that the victim would input cryptocurrency wallet private keys into an online password manager and then immediately destroy any physical records of the keys. This password manager experienced two major data breaches in August and November 2022, during which attackers stole encrypted passwords and vault data. FBI investigations found that the stolen data was subsequently used to gain unauthorized access to multiple victims' digital accounts, stealing information, cryptocurrency, and other data.
