2024-05-08
The funds that were stolen by a hacker from Poloniex's hot wallets in November have now been discovered to have been sent to Tornado Cash, a sanctioned coin mixer.
The hacker sent 1,100 ether (ETH), equivalent to approximately $3.3 million, to Tornado Cash in 100 ETH batches on Tuesday. These funds had been inactive for 178 days.
In addition to the ether, the hacker also transferred 501 bitcoin (BTC), worth $32 million, to an unidentified wallet on April 30.
Currently, the hacker still possesses a total of $181 million worth of various cryptocurrencies across different blockchains, as reported by Arkham data.
Tornado Cash is a protocol that enables users to obscure their crypto tokens by mixing them in multiple wallets over an extended period of time.
However, it was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2022 after being utilized by the North Korean hacking group Lazarus.
This group attempted to conceal funds obtained from the $625 million Axie Infinity exploit.
According to blockchain security firm Elliptic, in March, the Lazarus Group employed Tornado Cash to launder $12 million from the Heco Bridge hack, which occurred shortly after the Poloniex Hack.
