The infamous hacker responsible for the $125 million Poloniex hack in November has made a bold move by sending 1,100 ether (ETH), worth approximately $3.3 million, to the sanctioned coin mixer Tornado Cash. This transaction, which took place on Tuesday, saw the hacker send the ether in 11 batches of 100 ETH over a two-hour period, after the funds had been dormant for 178 days.
The Poloniex hacker, believed to be a member of the notorious Lazarus Group, also sent 501 bitcoin ($32 million) to an unlabeled wallet on April 30. Despite these transactions, the hacker still holds a total of $181 million worth of crypto across various blockchains, including Ethereum, Tron, and Bitcoin.
Tornado Cash, a protocol that allows users to obfuscate crypto tokens, was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2022 after it was used by the Lazarus Group to launder funds from the Axie Infinity exploit. The use of Tornado Cash in this latest transaction highlights the sophisticated means hackers employ to launder stolen funds.
Investigators believe that the Lazarus Group, a North Korean-based hacking organization known for targeting financial institutions and cryptocurrency platforms, is behind the Poloniex hack. The group has been involved in mass-scale cyber-crimes amounting to billions of dollars.
Despite Poloniex offering the hacker a 5% bounty to return the stolen funds, the recent transactions involving Tornado Cash suggest that the hacker has no intention of cooperating with the exchange. The hacker’s actions continue to showcase the challenges faced by authorities in tracking and recovering stolen cryptocurrency.
The Poloniex hack, which occurred on November 10, 2023, resulted in a staggering $114 million multi-crypto theft. The recent movements of the stolen funds serve as a reminder of the ongoing battle between hackers and security measures in the world of cryptocurrency.
