Harmony hacker launders over 18000 ETH through Tornado Cash

The hacker behind the exploit on Harmony Horizon Bridge has started moving some funds into the Tornado Cash Ethereum mixer. The recent activity shows that the hacker has rejected the $1M bounty offered by Harmony if the stolen $100M is returned.

Harmony hacker sends stolen funds to Tornado Cash

On June 28, the hacker started to move some of the stolen funds through Tornado Cash. 18,036.3 Ether (ETH), valued at around $21 million, has been transferred from the Horizon Bridge exploiter’s primary wallet. The funds were divided equally and transferred to three addresses in single transactions. The transfers happened within a ten-hour period.

Tornado Cash is also a platform supporting mixing up to 100 Ether (ETH) tokens on a single transaction. Therefore, it can take several hours for an exploiter to move large sums, such as those stolen from the Horizon Bridge. Tornado Cash mixer is a tool that hides the transaction path of cryptocurrencies, ensuring they cannot be traced back.

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The first two wallets that received the stolen ETH from the exploiter’s wallet have finalized mixing the coins. The third wallet is still sending the tokens to Tornado Cash in batches of 100 ETH. At the time of writing, the wallet had around 105 coins remaining.

Harmony has commented on the movement of these funds by the hacker, saying, “We are aware that hacker has begun to move funds through Tornado Cash. The team is working with two highly reputable blockchain tracing and analysis partners, and collaborating with the FBI as part of an investigation into this criminal act.”

The primary wallet of the exploiter still has around $80 million worth of ETH left. The hacker could return part of the funds. The Harmony protocol offered the exploiter a $1M bounty to return the funds. However, as this was only 1% of the stolen funds, there was doubt if the exploiter would agree with it.

Hacks in the crypto space

The cryptocurrency space has been vulnerable to hacking attacks over the past year. The largest hack in the sector happened in August last year when the Poly Network lost $610 million. However, almost the entire stolen amount was returned by the exploiter.

A recent attack also happened on the XCarnival Lab, with the exploiter managing to steal $3.8 million worth of tokens. However, the exploiter returned the stolen funds after being offered a bounty.

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