Mask Network Founder Suji Yan Loses $4M in Crypto to Hackers on Birthday

Mask Network founder Suji Yan’s personal digital assets worth nearly $4 million were stolen in a suspicious transaction.

Coordinated Laundering Attempt

The blockchain security firm Cyvers said Feb. 27 it had detected suspicious transactions linked to Suji Yan, the founder of Mask Network. At the time of writing, the suspicious address had received nearly $4 million in digital assets, including 113 ETH, 923 WETH, 48,400 MASK and 50,000 USDT.

In an alert shared via the social media platform X, the security firm noted that stolen assets had already been converted to ether and distributed to six different addresses. Reacting to the latest security incident, Meir Dolev, co-founder and CTO of Cyvers, suggested the hackers were too eager to launder the stolen digital assets and said real-time monitoring can help thwart these attempts.

“The stolen assets were swiftly converted to ETH and dispersed across multiple addresses, indicating a well-coordinated laundering attempt. This incident underscores the increasing sophistication of threat actors in the Web3 space and highlights the urgent need for real-time transaction monitoring, preemptive prevention and rapid incident response,” Dolev said.

Meanwhile, the Mask Network founder later confirmed the incident, which lasted some 11 minutes, occurred on his birthday. He speculated that the hacker either manually transferred the funds or perpetrated an offline attack.

“So, either my private key was compromised on my birthday and the hacker manually moved the funds, or this could have been an offline attack. I was at a private gathering with a dozen friends at the time, and there were a few minutes when my phone wasn’t with me, like when I went to the bathroom. I trust my friends, but this situation is a nightmare for anyone,” Yan wrote on X.

The Mask Network founder added that he has since contacted security experts Zachxbt and Slowmist to assist with the investigation. He also claimed the stolen funds were his personal assets, not connected to the company, the fund or any related investment projects.