The Penpie hacker has completed the money laundering process of the last batch of stolen funds worth $27 million by moving 1,661 ETH through Tornado Cash. This marks the end of the whole movement of the 11,261 ETHs, which in today’s equivalent is about $27 million that was stolen in the latest hack. Despite Penpie’s attempts to settle the issue and set a bounty while assuring the hacker’s safety from legal consequences,
In the process of negotiations, Penpie tried to negotiate with the hacker and offered him to become a part of Penpie’s team as a white-hat hacker, a person who hacks systems for positive purposes. The company aimed at at least minimizing the loss and the risks of lawsuits but the hacker proceeded to wash the stolen assets.
The laundering process was rather fast. The whole $50 million was sent via Tornado Cash, a Ethereum-based mixrer which helps to launder the money by making their source less traceable. Tornado Cash is often used by hackers as it helps them launder the stolen cryptocurrency and make it hard to trace by the authorities. This case is yet another example of how hackers coulf easily transfer stolen funds through cryptocurrencies due to their decentralized nature.
Penpie Hacker Launders Millions
According to Spot On Chain, a blockchain analytics platform, four hackers including the Penpie hacker have been using Tornado Cash since the beginning of September as revealed in a recent post on X. In total, they have shifted 20,561 ETH worth of around $49.3 million, through the platform.
The Penpie hacker was able to transfer 11,261 ETH or $26.7 million within a short span of time. The WazirX exploiter, who was behind another major attack, still has 54,155 ETH ($123 million) stolen, which makes up 88% of all the stolen funds in that hack.
Stolen assets are now being moved at a faster rate and with the help of Tornado Cash, there are growing fears within the community of how stolen funds can be tracked and recovered.
With increasing attention being paid to such cases, large exchanges such as Binance are being forced to enhance measures to avoid such occurrences. These challenges remain relevant to the crypto industry as hackers find loopholes to penetrate and use while the regulators try to contain the increasing cases of crypto-crime.
