Hacker behind Liquid breach sent nearly $20m in Ethereum to Tornado Cash mixer

The hacker who breached the Bitcoin exchange Liquid sent Ethereum worth almost $20 million to the Tornado Cash transaction mixer, reported by Elliptic, the blockchain analytics firm.

On August 19, the Japanese exchange reported the hack. Initially, the loss was estimated at $80 million. Elliptic researchers together with the exchange’s team refined the losses — they amounted to just over $97 million.

The analysts noted that the hacker is also attempting to convert ERC-20 tokens worth a total of $45 million into Ethereum to avoid blocking by projects that have such capability. To do this, the attacker uses decentralized exchanges, including Uniswap and SushiSwap.

In Liquid stated that the stolen assets in Ethereum-tokens worth about $17.4 million have already been frozen. The team noted that the attack affected 69 different coins in total.

According to CoinDesk, the attacker is attempting to launder funds through centralized exchanges. In several transactions he transferred TRON tokens worth about $1 million to an address belonging to Huobi. A platform representative said that the account was restricted and an internal investigation has begun.

11.5 million XRP worth about $14.5 million was sent to Binance, Huobi and Poloniex.

The Liquid team traced that on one exchange he sold Ripple tokens for Bitcoin and withdrew the cryptocurrency to two addresses that now hold 192 BTC.

Update:
We are currently tracing the movement of the assets and working with other exchanges to freeze and recover funds.

Attacker deposited XRP via another exchange and withdrew BTC to these 2 addresses:
12PKkwoFkXp6JtN7roWRA2gSitE6nVDds4
1JW1tcBXp1vZ6KGEirFNSXb5RgZSaL63Av

— Liquid Global Official (@Liquid_Global) August 19, 2021

According to CoinDesk, the centralized platform involved was Binance. A representative said they had blocked the accounts linked to the transactions and provided information to Liquid.

Poloniex also confirmed to the publication that it blocked addresses linked to the Liquid hacker.

Earlier in September 2020, the successful attack on the KuCoin exchange happened, and the hacker used Tornado Cash to conceal traces of stolen Ethereum assets.

Part of the bitcoins was laundered through the ChipMixer mixer and the Wasabi wallet with mixing capability.

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