September 30, 2024
By Our Correspondent
The orchestrator of India’s largest cryptocurrency theft has nearly completed the laundering of the stolen tokens from the exchange. The hack that occurred in July led to WazirX, previously regarded as one of India’s foremost cryptocurrency platforms, losing over $230 million in assets.
On-chain data reveals that the hacker’s wallet, which initially contained the stolen funds, now holds only approximately $6 million in Ethereum. The blockchain analytics firm Arkham has tracked these assets and observed that the stolen tokens have been moved through various new wallets before being funneled through Tornado Cash, a well-known privacy service. The scale of this laundering operation has significantly escalated in recent months.
In August alone, nearly $50 million in tokens were funneled into Tornado Cash. However, the illicit activity saw a marked increase in September, with a notable transfer occurring early last Wednesday, involving 3,792 ETH valued at around $10 million. Tornado Cash facilitates the swapping of cryptocurrencies across different blockchains while anonymizing the associated wallet addresses.
The situation surrounding Tornado Cash took a dramatic turn in May when a Dutch court convicted one of its developers, Alexey Pertsev, of money laundering, resulting in a prison sentence exceeding five years. The hack that initiated this series of events took place in July when one of WazirX’s multisig wallets was compromised.
Reports indicate that the attack resulted in the theft of over $100 million in SHIB tokens and $52 million in Ethereum, among other assets. This significant loss accounted for more than 45% of the total reserves reported by the exchange in June 2024.
