Kronos Research will transfer its hacker funds to Tornado Cash.

Kronos Research will transfer its hacker funds to Tornado Cash.


In the year The hacker behind the $25 million exploit of quantitative trading firm Kronos Research in mid-November 2023 began moving the funds nearly six months after the exploit.

The hacked wallet first transferred 1,314 Ether (ETH) worth $4 million to a new address starting at 0x8F5e4 and later transferred all the ETH to another address starting at 0x164A24b.

Source: PeckShield

The hacker made 100 transactions of 100 ETH from the last wallet and transferred them to Tornado Cash, a crypto-mingling tool.

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The hacker made several transfers to Tornado Cash. Source: Etherscan

Tornado Cash is an open source cryptocurrency mixer that runs on Ethereum virtual machine compatible networks. The hybrid services obscure the path of crypto transactions and make it extremely difficult to trace the source of funds.

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Although created as a privacy tool, hackers often use mixing services to launder stolen funds using decentralized exchange platforms.

Tornado Cash's significant utility in money laundering has prompted the United States government to ban its use in August 2022. The founders were subsequently indicted in 2023 on charges of money laundering and embezzlement.

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While opinions in the crypto community differ on the adoption of privacy tools, there is consensus on the persecution of developers for creating applications.

Crypto analytics firm PeckShield has issued a warning about the money transfer on X. The move to Tornado Cash warned that the hacker was trying to launder the stolen funds.

Over the years, exploiters have preferred crypto-mixing services over centralized exchanges, because they exchange addresses after identification.

Kronos Capital was compromised in November 2023 after the exploiters were able to obtain the keys to the company's application programming interface. The company initially denied financial losses during its initial announcement.

Later, on-chain investigator ZachXBT revealed that approximately 12,800 ETH worth $25 million had been stolen and transferred to six unique crypto wallet addresses. Kronos Capital has suspended trading services to investigate the loss.

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