The U.S. Department of Justice announced that former Amazon security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed was given a three-year prison sentence after exfiltrating more than $12.3 million from two decentralized finance cryptocurrency exchanges hacked in July 2022, The Hacker News reports.
Aside from returning the stolen amount, Ahmed has also been ordered to pay more than $5 million in restitution to the impacted DeFi exchanges.
Millions of dollars have been exfiltrated by Ahmed from an unnamed DeFi cryptocurrency exchange after exploiting a smart contract vulnerability that enabled the insertion of fraudulent pricing data, with the hacker later agreeing to return most of the stolen assets provided that the firm did not report the flash loan intrusion, according to the Justice Department.
Meanwhile, another $3.6 million was stolen from an attack against Nirvana Finance, which resulted in the DeFi exchange's closure, with Ahmed then laundering all of the exfiltrated funds through cross-chain bridges, the Justice Department noted.
