French authorities arrest duo in connection with Holograph’s $14.4 million hack

The investigation into a multi-million dollar hack on the Omnichain tokenization platform Holograph has yielded initial results. French authorities have arrested two people who may have been involved in the attack.

According to a tweet from the official Holograph X account, the Italian Directorate for Anti-Mafia Investigations, in cooperation with several law enforcement agencies – including Europol, the French Office for the Prevention of Cybercrime and the Paris Search and Intervention Brigade – have arrested suspects in connection with the Holograph hack and seized assets and electronic devices as part of the arrests.

The Holograph Hack

On June 13, a cybercriminal exploited a vulnerability in the Holograph operator contract and minted 1 billion HLG tokens worth $14.4 million. HLG is the protocol’s native token. Within hours of the attack, the hacker converted the stolen assets into Tether (USDT) and captured the stablecoins.

On-chain analysts found data suggesting that a rogue developer carried out the attack after making preparations about a month in advance. The wallet address that received the minted supply was funded 26 days before the attack.

The Holograph team immediately alerted law enforcement authorities and the investigation is ongoing.

Law enforcement and cyber investigators have traced the attacks to two men in their 30s living in Italy. They were arrested and detained on August 9 and will soon be extradited to France to face charges. Holograph said their names could not be published on the instructions of French authorities and in the interests of further investigation.

“The broader investigation is still very much in flux – the team will provide further information regarding asset recovery for the Holograph ecosystem as the process progresses,” the transcript continues.

HLG increases by 62%

The Holograph attack took its toll on HLG’s value as the token crashed 80% from $0.014 to a low of $0.0029 in less than ten hours. The token’s market cap dropped from $22 million to $4.8 million and the value of the stolen supply decreased from $14.4 million to $7 million.

Although HLG’s market cap is currently below $3.44 million, the token has reacted to the news of the arrests, rising 62% from $0.0016 to $0.0026. At the time of writing, HLG was trading at around $0.0024, up 41% in the last 24 hours.