The hackers have already extracted at least 30,000 Ethers from the wallet where the stolen funds got housed. The FBI explained that the attackers who hit the Ronin network were North Korean.
The hackers who extracted more than USD 600 million in ether (ETH) after an attack on the Ronin network from the video game Axie Infinity have been absorbing their loot step by step; they have done so through a mixer they can hide the funds from authorities.
Shortly after the attack of the bridge that links the Ronin network to the Ethereum main chain got made public, the attackers began migrating small pieces of ill-gotten ether to Tornado Cash-related accounts.
Tornado Cash is a tool that mixes the digital assets it receives through a smart contract, which acts as a party between the origin and destination addresses. This feature aims to encourage the privacy of operations led on networks such as Ethereum, Polygon, and Binance Smart Chain.
So far, attackers got to mix almost 30,000 ether from his account using Tornado Cash. This amount equals at least USD 90 million, according to the price of ETH in the crypto market.
Thanks to the US Department of the Treasury punishing the main account, the hackers have had to use alternate accounts to withdraw funds. This action further limits the mobility of capital directly from that account.
Some of the alternate addresses used by the attackers also got detected as Ronin Bridge Exploiter on Etherscan, the Ethereum chain explorer.
Cryptocurrency mixers can make tracking a transaction quite hard; however, they do not make it an impossible task. For this reason, the administrators of Tornado Cash are using a tool brought by the Chainalisys platform, which helps to follow transactions in these cases. This type of tool got called an oracle.
The tracking oracle designed by Chainalisys is a free tool, although it has its limitations. Roman Semenov, one of the co-founders of Tornado Cash, explained via his Twitter account that he applied to obtain the paid services of the research firm. Still, until that moment, he had not received a response about this matter.
The FBI Expressed that the Hackers of the Network that Hosts Axie Infinity are North Korean
Last Thursday, April 14, the FBI attributed the attack on the Ronin network of the video game Axie Infinity to a group of North Korean hackers known as Lazarus Group. This organization got responsible for some of the most prominent attacks, such as the Sony hack and the Wannacry ransomware.
There have been no official details from the Lazarus Group acknowledging its responsibility in the cyberattack on the Ronin network bridge, developed by the company Sky Mavis.
For the worst possible outcome of this situation, in which the funds get lost, and the wrongdoers remain free, Sky Mavis has already executed a plan B to ensure that the company keeps carrying out its activities and that its investors can get back their funds.
By: Jenson Nuñez
