Six months after the $25 million hack on quantitative trading firm Kronos Research, one of the six wallets linked to the hacker has moved funds to Tornado Cash.
The compromised wallet initially transmitted 1,314 Ether, valued at $4 million, to an address beginning with 0x8F5e4 and then transferred the entire amount to an address beginning with 0x164A24b.
The hacker transmitted ten transactions totaling one hundred Ethereum from the final wallet to the cryptocurrency mixing application Tornado Cash.Â
Tornado Cash is an open-source cryptocurrency aggregator on Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks. The blending services significantly complicate tracing the origin of the funds by obfuscating the path of the cryptocurrency transactions.Â
Hackers frequently exploit blending services to launder stolen funds through decentralized exchange platforms despite their inception as privacy tools.Â
The substantial adoption of Tornado Cash for illegitimate money transfers led to the imposition of sanctions by the United States government on its usage in August 2022. Following this, in 2023, the organization’s founders faced charges of money laundering and sanctions violations.
Although there is some disagreement among crypto community members concerning the adoption of privacy tools, a general stance opposes state persecution of application developers.
PeckShield, a crypto analytics provider, issued a warning concerning the transfer of funds on X. The advisory noted that the transfer to Tornado Cash indicates the hacker’s intention to engage in money laundering with the stolen funds.
As exploiters can exchange block addresses once identified, they have favored crypto-mixing services over centralized exchanges.Â
The unauthorized individuals gained access to Kronos Capital’s application programming interface keys in November 2023, thereby facilitating an infiltration of the organization. Initially, the company refuted any financial loss in its initial announcement.
Later, on-chain investigator ZachXBT disclosed that the theft and transfer of approximately $12,800 ETH valued at $25 million to six unique crypto wallet addresses had occurred. While investigating the loss, Kronos Capital suspended its trading services.
