IOTA Price Analysis: A Suspect Arrested for Stealing €10 Million

IOT/USD has been under pressure over the last two days, running towards its second consecutive session in the red. Since 11th January, after the deep fall on 10th, price action has been very much narrowing. There has been a lack of committed direction from either buyers or sellers. The upper part of the range should be noted at $0.3130, the low around $0.2900-$0.2800.
Given the above-described price behavior, IOT/USD has formed a bearish pennant pattern structure. The falling of the price from 3rd to 10th January can be viewed as the pole. The recent range-bound trading observed makes up the flag/pennant. This structure does appear to be vulnerable to downside risks.

€10 Million IOTA Theft

A 36-year old man in the United Kingdom was arrested by the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU). This comes after he was identified by German Hessen State Police as a suspect in the theft of €10 Million worth of IOTA, going back as far as January 2018.

Further details were provided by the Europol website, which stated that the suspect remains unnamed at this time. They are alleged to have used a malicious IOTA seed generator, obtained via www.iotaseed.io, in order to receive backdoor access to user wallets. It is thought that this was done over the course of six months from August 2017, culminating in the attack on 19th January 2018, when he started to log into user wallets, then transferring funds without their knowledge.

Hacker’s Method to Obtain IOTA

The hacker was known by the IOTA community as pseudonym Norbertvdberg. He lured people in offering support to users, linking them to this iotaseed.io. This would then generate a random unique 81-digit passkeys, which IOTA wallets require to function.

Once enough seeds were gathered to exploit profitably, he then on 19th January started logging into 85 user wallets, transferring about €10 million worth of IOTA to a wallet he controlled. The suspect even went as far as setting up a DDOS diversion for IOTA admins. This would essentially tie them up with difficulties caused by spiking network traffic; this way, it would throw them of course to not notice several suspicious transactions being made.

Technical Review – IOT/USD

Keeping in mind the upper and lower levels of the earlier mentioned range, a break either way of these noted will likely be the next committed direction. Due to the bearish pennant pattern, it does appear the odds are stacked in favour of the bears. Should sellers force a breakout to the downside from support $0.2900-$0.2800, then expect another wave of selling pressure. There is immediately a demand zone around $0.2550, in case of a breach. Further south would mean a potential complete reversal of the December run of gains.