Ronin Hackers Used Authorized Mixers To Transfer Stolen Money From ETH To BTC!
The root cause of the Ronin Bridge attack that happened in the march has been identified by the on-chain investigator, bliteZero, who is one of the most loyal and useful people who was also handling the company’s 2022 Mid-Year Blockchain Security report.
The hackers involved in the Ronin Bridge attack smartly transferred $625 million worth of funds from the Ether crypto to the Bitcoin. Moreover, these funds were transferred using the privacy tools like renBTC and Blender available to them.
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Ronin Hackers Used Authorized Mixers To Transfer Stolen Money From ETH To BTC
Moreover, further details reveal that the hackers were able to send most of their Ether funds through sanctioned Ethereum crypto mixer Tornado Cash. Furthermore, these funds were transferred to the Bitcoin network and converted to Bitcoin with the help of the Ren Protocol.
With the help of investigation and several reports, the officers have identified that the hackers are a North Korean cybercrime organization Lazarus Group and have been indulged in this activity for a long period.
Who Are The Hackers Behind This Event?
Moreover, firstly, they managed to transfer a small amount of 6249 Ether to the centralized exchanges (CEXs). Huobi (5,028 ETH) and FTX (1,219 ETH) were also sent on March 28, 2022.
Besides all this, a report from centralized exchanges has claimed that the hackers managed to convert that 6249 Ether into Bitcoin and then proceeded further with some big amount. In the further transactions, 439 BTC, or $20.5 million, were transferred through the Bitcoin Privacy Tool Blender.
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned this on May 6, creating a problem. Now, the officers have been trying to identify the Blender’s deposit addresses to know about further investigation.
Even 175,000 ETH stolen between April 4 and May 19 was transferred to Tornado Cash. These small details will help the officers to know further about the hackers.
Further Amount Stolen
After the transfer of these funds, the officers could identify the funds that were stolen and converted further. Uniswap and 1inch were used to convert 113,000 ETH to renBTC, according to the report.
Apart from it, Ren’s decentralized cross-chain bridge was used in order to convert the stolen Ether to the Bitcoin network. However, for the unwrapping from the Bitcoin network, this system was used further, too.
In August 2022, 2,871 BTC worth $61.6 million were withdrawn using ChipMixer. Along with the other transactions, the officers are working on this case also. However, now, ₿liteZero, the investigating officer, has termed the hackers a “mystery to be investigated” and is now looking for further reports to solve it.
