A former security engineer was sentenced to three years in prison for attacking two DEXs and stealing more than $12 million in cryptocurrency. This is the first conviction case for a smart contract hacker attack

According to BlockBeats, on April 12, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams announced that former security engineer Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced to three years in prison by US District Judge Victor Marrero for attacking two decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges and stealing more than $12 million worth of cryptocurrency. This is the first conviction case for smart contract hacking. In July 2022, Ahmed used false pricing data to attack a cryptocurrency exchange and stole about $9 million in cryptocurrency. He then attacked Nirvana Finance, exploiting a vulnerability in its smart contract to buy cryptocurrency at a price lower than the contract set, and sold it to Nirvana at a higher price, stealing almost all of Nirvana's $3.6 million in funds, causing it to close shortly after being hacked. Ahmed used complex techniques to launder money, including token exchange, cross-chain transfer, and converting funds into untraceable Monero. At the time of the incident, Ahmed, a senior security engineer, happened to have special skills such as reverse engineering smart contracts and blockchain auditing. In addition to the three-year prison sentence, Ahmed was sentenced to three years of supervised release, and was required to hand over approximately $12.3 million and a large amount of cryptocurrency, and pay more than $5 million in compensation to the two exchanges.