Crypto: Certik Links $63m In Tornado Cash Deposits To $282m Wallet Compromise

Blockchain data showed that stolen Bitcoin was bridged to Ethereum, fragmented into multiple wallets and later routed into the crypto mixer.

Roughly $63 million in Tornado Cash deposits has been linked to the $282 million cryptocurrency wallet compromise of Jan. 10.

Blockchain security firm CertiK said in a Monday X post that its monitoring systems identified Tornado Cash interactions tied to the exploit.

The update expands on the post-theft money laundering mechanics of the Jan. 10 incident, which is being tracked by multiple crypto investigators due to the amount lost and the speed at which funds were moved.

According to CertiK's analysis, a portion of the stolen Bitcoin (BTC) was bridged to Ethereum, converted into Ether and then split across several addresses.

CertiK’s found that at least 686 BTC was bridged to Ethereum using a cross-chain swap, resulting in 19,600 ETH received by a single Ethereum address.

The $63 million figure represents only a portion of the total amount lost. However, the fund movement shows how the attacker is working to obscure the trail after the initial cross-chain transfers during the exploit.

The fund movements observed in the Jan. 10 compromise reflects an established laundering playbook, according to Marwan Hachem, CEO of blockchain security firm FearsOff.

“This flow follows the classic large-scale laundering playbook pretty closely, especially for cross-chain thefts involving BTC and LTC,” Hachem told Cointelegraph.

He said that the use of THORswap for Bitcoin-to-Ether conversions and the subsequent breakdown of funds into roughly 400 ETH chunks before entering the mixer were “textbook,” as they help reduce attention and make post-mixing recovery significantly harder.

Source: CoinTelegraph