Gabss Strikes Again!!!

The now infamous Star Atlas player Gabss has gone into hiding after being accused and confronted with evidence of stealing and scamming several thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency from Star Atlas community members.

Gabss Targets Bodhi In Good-Faith Social Engineering Attack

The morning of January 31st was a highly anticipated day not just Star Atlas, but the entire Solana community.  That day, the popular decentralized exchange Jupiter was scheduled to airdrop its $JUP token to user who had interacted with their decentralized exchange service over the past two years. To claim their airdropped tokens, users were required to go to Jupiter’s airdrop website to claim their rewards. That day, when Bodhi went to claim his sizeable reward, he found that his tokens had already been claimed. Stunned, Bodhi quickly set out to uncover how his tokens had already been claimed. To his horror, his search revealed that not only had his tokens been claimed, but they had already been sent to another wallet along with rewards from another one of Bodhi’s accounts.

How Misplaced Trust Led To A Social Hack Within Star Atlas

In the days leading up to the theft, Bodhi had worked with Gabss, another Star Atlas community member, on installing a series of price bots on a website. Although Gabss had a checkered past within the Star Atlas community, Bodhi was confident that Gabss had turned a new leaf. During a video conference call to setup Bodhi’s website, Bodhi inadvertently revealed his wallet’s seed phrase to Gabss on camera. Bodhi initially thought nothing of it since the wallet was a burner wallet. Bodhi quickly realized his mistake when he went to claim his $JUP rewards. In total, Bodhi lost 3,400 $JUP in the theft (an equivalent of  $2,074 at time of writing).

By digging through the blockchain transaction details, Bodhi quickly realized that the trail led back to Gabss.

” I figured it was him [Gabss] at first, cause he’s the only one that I even accidentally exposed a seed to. Upon checking it was the same seed as the one I had exposed,  it was just a matter of tying my wallet to his on chain” – Bodhi

Bodhi provided the below wallet that the stolen funds were moved to as verification: https://solscan.io/account/GPtRuBum5kpSfUYcNiJ5p6Ec7xyHNmZRc5ybqa8NJi8k#splTransfers

Following the trail to its end, the theft account was funded by a wallet associated with Gabss himself.

Blockchain transaction Ids authorized by Gabss’ account

Conversation between Gabs and Bodhi

Blockchain detectives quickly uncovered more instances of potential theft as Rat O Doom, another Star Atlas community member, identified themselves has having $JUP stolen by Gabs.

Gabss Goes Into Hiding – Erases Evidence of Existence

Blockchain crimes are notoriously difficult to confront due to the nature of the technology. There is also no formal and easy process by which to file and prosecute criminal activity at local levels. In Star Atlas, there are currently no criminal proceedings that provide the opportunity to administer a verdict of guilt or innocence. While it would be unjust in the eyes of the law to assume Gabss’ absolute guilt, shortly after being exposed and confronted, Gabss removed themselves from every Star Atlas related discord server, seemingly acknowledging some level of guilt by their subsequent actions. Simultaneously, every friend Gabss had on their account was deleted including Gabss GitHub page and Twitter profile.

Was this a crime and theft of opportunity or was this the first multi-year social engineering scam reaching its conclusion? Gabbs had been active within the Star Atlas community for several years and while the player held a questionable reputation, was known within the community. It is likely that the Star Atlas community will never know the full extent of Gabss’ theft and crimes.  Community members have now become wary of new members or long-time inactive members as anyone could pose another threat from yet another scammer or Gabss returning under a different nome diguere. For some, the only justice they’ll receive is knowing that their mistrust of Gabs is vindicated.