In just 8 days, a hacker on Tornado Cash conceals $145M worth of Ether on HECO Chain.

A cybercriminal who exploited the HECO Chain managed to transfer and conceal nearly 40,392 Ether (ETH) using the crypto-mixing platform Tornado Cash over the course of eight days. PeckShield, a crypto investigator, revealed that the exploiter made 19 transfers to Tornado Cash addresses in an attempt to make approximately $145.7 million worth of stolen Ether untraceable. The majority of the funds were sent to a single Tornado Cash address, with a separate transaction of 0.2 ETH worth $699 sent to a different address. The largest transfer amounted to 11,300 ETH worth roughly $39.5 million. Hackers often use Tornado Cash to anonymize their stolen funds. On March 21, an account linked to a $24 million Rocket Pool hack from September 2023 also transferred 3,700 ETH to Tornado Cash with the same intention. North Korea’s Lazarus Group hackers have also resumed using Tornado Cash to launder funds stolen from various hacks. It’s worth noting that Tornado Cash was previously sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department in August 2022 for its alleged involvement in facilitating the laundering of over $1 billion in illicit funds, including money associated with the Lazarus Group. The co-founder of Tornado Cash, Roman Storm, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business in September 2023. The Arbitrum DAO initially proposed funding the legal defense costs of the Tornado Cash co-founders but later removed the proposal, although the reasons behind this decision remain unclear.