The recent news reveals that the Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange hacker has transferred 100 ETH to the Tornado Cash mixer. This marks the first instance of a hacker attempting to launder stolen assets, with a substantial amount of $182 million worth of cryptocurrencies in Ethereum (ETH), Tron (TRX), Bitcoin (BTC), and Bitcoin Token (BTCT) still remaining in the hacker’s wallet.

On November 10, 2023, Poloniex suffered a significant loss of nearly $125 million in cryptocurrencies due to the attack. Following the incident, exchange owner Justin Sun successfully identified and froze a portion of the assets linked to the hacker’s addresses. Sun later extended an offer to the hacker, proposing a $10 million reward in exchange for the return of the stolen assets.

The recent activities of hackers from the Kronos Research cryptocurrency platform and the Hundred Finance cross-chain lending protocol have also come to light, as they began transferring funds to the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixing service. According to reports by PeckShield, the hacker initiated a series of transactions, ultimately sending 3,000 ETH (equivalent to approximately $3 million) to Tornado Cash for laundering purposes.

Kronos Capital fell victim to a hack in November 2023, resulting from unauthorized access to API keys. The use of Tornado Cash for transferring illicitly acquired funds has garnered attention from the U.S. government, leading to sanctions against the crypto mixer in August 2022. Developers of Tornado Cash faced charges of money laundering and sanctions violations, with the prosecution office seeking a five-year prison sentence for co-founder Alexey Pertsev.

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