A North Korean group responsible for the July hack on India’s WazirX crypto exchange transferred over $11 million in stolen ether (ETH) to Tornado Cash early Monday, seeking to obscure the trail of the stolen funds.
The breach, which involved over $100 million in shiba inu (SHIB), $52 million in ether, and other assets, represents a major portion of WazirX’s reserves.
Blockchain data tracked by Arkham shows that more than 5,000 ETH, valued at over $11 million, was moved to a new address at 07:19 UTC. Following this, $1.2 million worth of tokens from the new address were sent to Tornado Cash across five transactions.
Tornado Cash enables cryptocurrency users to exchange tokens while masking wallet addresses on multiple blockchains. Although the service itself is not illegal, it is often employed by cybercriminals to conceal the digital trail of stolen funds.
Last week, the hacker transferred an additional $4 million from the stolen funds. The primary wallet connected to the attack still holds more than $107 million in various tokens, with $100 million of that in ether.
The hacker’s address currently holds over $140 million worth of various tokens, including $150 million in ether. This address had not previously been linked to Tornado Cash transactions.
WazirX suffered a security breach in July, when more than $230 million were stolen from a multisignature wallet.
WazirX’s legal advisers stated on Monday that customers are unlikely to recover the full value of their assets in cryptocurrency, with potential refunds ranging between 55% and 57%.
The North Korean hacking group Lazarus is suspected to be behind the attack. The group is believed to have laundered over $1 billion in stolen funds through Tornado Cash before the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned the service in 2022.
Last momth, WazirX asked the Singapore High Court for a six-month moratorium to restructure its liabilities following a $234 million hack in July. Rival exchange CoinSwitch is considering legal action to recover $9.6 million in assets deposited on the platform.
