The Intelligence and Strategic Operations Unit (IFSO) of the Delhi Police has revealed a link between the hacking of a private cryptocurrency wallet and the Hamas militant group. This is reported by the Times of India.

According to the agency’s report, in 2019, Indian businessman Pashim Vihar lost access to his wallet, which contained funds in Bitcoin, Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash.

According to investigators, the militants withdrew cryptocurrencies through various addresses. Later, the coins fell into the military wing of Hamas. The amount of damage is $536,000 at the moment.

Later, the data of several wallets belonging to the militants ended up on the darknet.

“One of the addresses belonged to Mohammad Nasir Ibrahim Abdullah. Another wallet into which cryptocurrencies were transferred belonged to a certain Ahmed Safi from the Palestinian city of Ramallah,” the IFSO report says.

Some of the coins ended up on a British gambling site and a site with child pornography.

The Hamas group has switched to cryptocurrencies to finance its activities since 2019 in order to circumvent international sanctions.

Recall that in July 2021, the Israeli authorities issued an arrest warrant for 84 Bitcoin addresses belonging to Hamas.

According to the calculations of the Institute for International Policy on Combating Terrorism, a total of 3370 BTC (~$29 million at that time) was received on one of the wallets belonging to Hamas from October 2015 to July 2019.

Whitestream analysts discovered that the group used several bitcoin addresses to collect donations, one of which was hosted on the Coinbase platform.