Janice R. Andrews
Over $230 million was stolen from the Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX by a hacker. The stolen money is now being moved using Tornado Cash, a famous service that mixes cryptocurrencies. As of early Tuesday, the move was made to hide the transaction path. This will make it harder to find the hacker who stole the money and other assets.
The hacker sent almost $4 million worth of ether (ETH) to a Tornado Cash device in 16 transactions on the Ethereum network, which Arkham tracked. The hacker has more than $155 million in different tokens in their wallet, with most of it being ether, which is worth about $150 million. Someone has taken money and used Tornado Cash for the first time to move it.
Tornado Cash is a decentralized service that lets people trade tokens on different blockchains without showing their bank addresses. The service itself is not illegal, but cybercriminals often use it to hide their names and cover their tracks online. This makes it hard for police and prosecutors to follow the money that has been stolen or gained illegally.
In July 2024, there was a major security breach in one of WazirX’s multisig wallets. Over $100 million in Shiba Inu (SHIB), $52 million in ether, and other assets were lost. The stolen money was worth more than 45% of the exchange’s total reserves in June 2024. Because of the breach, WazirX is going through a process to restructure its debts.
WazirX’s legal team said on Monday that users would not get full money back for what they lost. The best thing that could happen is that between 55% and 57% of the stolen money is found.
People think that the North Korean hacking group Lazarus may be behind this attack. Lazarus is known for using Tornado Cash to move over $1 billion in stolen funds before U.S. sanctions were put in place in 2022. The fact that the stolen ether is still being moved around makes people worry about how well platforms can protect user assets and how hard it is to track down illegal coin transactions.
