Pink Drainer, a wallet-draining service, has announced the shutdown of services. On-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed the team’s private announcement on Telegram that stated, “We have reached our goal now, and according to plan, it’s time for us to retire.” The team has no plans of returning in the future and clarified that all the information stored will be wiped and securely destroyed. They added,
“It is very likely that our retirement will have no major impact on the scene, people will move on to other drainers just as quickly as they moved to us.”
Drainers essentially offer users, i.e. cybercriminals, a software kit to assists them in stealing crypto assets. Scripts alongside video tutorials showing how to exploit technical vulnerabilities are provided for a fee, plus a chunk of the stolen assets. Phishing sites are usually used to deceive users into getting into red-flagged transactions that would drain their wallet balances.
Pink Drainer has been associated with several Discord and Twitter hacks over the past few months. Victims include OpenAI’s CTO Mira Murati, Cherry Network, Pika Protocol, Orbiter Finance, and Evmos. In fact, its kit has helped hackers target more than 21,000 victims and siphon more than $85 million in crypto. From this, $4.4 million was stolen from just a single user in December 2023. Notably, the victim was tricked into signing an “increase approval” function.
Pink, the pseudonymous developer of the drainer, had previously asserted that he doesn’t feel guilty about benefiting from the losses of others. According to him, it is natural for someone to lose money for another to gain. He said,
“I don’t phish anyone, I just code.”
The team signed off by acknowledging,
“This entire thing grew so much larger than we could have even imagined it would have when we had started. We apologize for the lack of prior notice about our departure, but I think most of you will understand.”
