By
Svetlana Soroka
May 18th, 2024
The Poloniex hacker has different crypto assets, led by Ethereum (ETH) and Tron (TRX), worth more than $181 million.
The infamous Poloniex hacker, believed to be a North Korea-sponsored cyber attacker, has sent 1100 Ethereum (ETH) units to crypto mixer Tornado Cash. According to on-chain data provided by Arkham Intelligence, the Poloniex hacker sent 11 batches of 100 ETH units, worth around $306K, in the past 24 hours to Tornado Cash.
Earlier this month, the Poloniex hacker transferred around 501 Bitcoins, worth about $31.9 million, to an unknown address. Previously, Justin Sun, founder of Tron network, attempted to dox the Poloniex hacker by sending several batches of TRX to no avail.
Poloniex crypto exchange attempted to offer the hacker a 5 percent bounty reward but the attacker has not shown any interest in engagement. Currently, the Poloniex hacker holds 25.5K ETH, 305M TRX, 501 BTC, 364 BTCT, 27 billion FLOKI, 2.3M TUSD, and 642 WETH, among others.
Today, Poloniex Hacker: 0x3E…fDFd transferred 100 ETH (about $308,000) to Tornado Cash. This is the first time that the Poloniex hacker has transferred money to Tornado Cash for money laundering. Currently, the Poloniex hacker also has $182 million in crypto assets, including…
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) May 7, 2024
Poloniex Hacker and Tornado Cash
As Coinspeaker reported, the United States government has directed enforcement action against Tornado Cash developers and co-founders. Notably, the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the crypto mixer, Tornado Cash, thus leading to the arrest of the co-founder Roman Storm.
According to the US Treasury Office, the infamous Lazarus Group has severally used Tornado Cash to obfuscate more than half a billion dollars. Furthermore, it is believed the Lazarus Group conducted a cyber attack on Axie Infinity’s Ronin network bridge in early 2022.
Rampant Crypto Attacks
The cryptocurrency sector has been a soft target for hackers due to its poor security design. Sophisticated hackers have mostly targeted blockchain bridges by manipulating web3 smart contracts. However, some blockchain security experts have pointed to insider operations as the top threat to crypto attacks. Moreover, hackers can apply for engineering web3 jobs and easily build backdoors for later manipulation.
The use of crypto mixers remains the largest impediment to confronting Web3 hackers. Furthermore, some crypto companies, led by Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ: COIN), have advocated for privacy in the financial sector.
Earlier, blockchain security firm Elliptic previously noted that the Lazarus Group used Tornado Cash to launder the Heco Bridge attack. According to PerkShield, the funds stolen from Kronos Research last year were transferred to Tornado Cash earlier today.
#PeckShieldAlert #KronosResearch Hacker 5: The labeled address has transferred 200 $ETH to #Tornadocash and approximately 1,314 $ETH (worth around $4 million) to a new address 0x164A…D5c4, and started laundering them via #Tornadocash#KronosResearch was hacked in mid-November… pic.twitter.com/7YOVuNpebd
— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) May 7, 2024
Market Impact
The rampant attacks on web3 projects, especially by North Korea-sponsored hackers, have hindered the mass adoption of digital assets. With a significant amount of capital siphoned from the crypto industry every quarter, Web3 developers are forced to build more secure smart contracts, specifically those involving multi-chain.
Nonetheless, the recent approval of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs is a major development in eliminating crypto attacks. Moreover, investors can now trade shares of the underlying crypto with high liquidity and lower security risks.