Summary:
- The Ronin Network, Axie Infinity hackers, have transferred 33,568.152 ETH to a new address
- 61,253.416 ETH now remains in the Ethereum address that stored the initial funds from the hack
- The US Treasury has intensified sanctions aimed at blocking Ethereum addresses associated with the hack
- Decentralized mixing platforms such as Tornado Cash have complied with the sanctions
The Ronin Network, Axie Infinity hackers have transferred 33,568.152 ETH from the original Ethereum address used to orchestrate the attack. The movement of funds from the Ethereum address was first highlighted by the team at Wu Blockchain, who also pointed out that the original address now holds 61,253 ETH.
The Ronin Network hacker address (0x098B7…) once again transferred 33,568 ETH to a new address, and the current hacker address still has about 61,253 ETH.
Related link: https://t.co/kSKFVnjXLG
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 24, 2022
The US Treasury Intensifies Sanctions on the Ethereum Addresses used by the Axie Infinity Hackers
The move of 33.568k ETH from the original Ethereum address used to carry out the Ronin Network exploit comes in the wake of the US Treasury intensifying sanctions against addresses linked to the hack.
At the time of writing, the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the US Department of the Treasury has identified and sanctioned the following ETH address linked to the state-sponsored North Korean hacker group, Lazarus. The latter has been directly related to the event.
Address – ETH 0x098B716B8Aaf21512996dC57EB0615e2383E2f96
Address – ETH 0x098B716B8Aaf21512996dC57EB0615e2383E2f96
Address – ETH 0xa0e1c89Ef1a489c9C7dE96311eD5Ce5D32c20E4B
Address – ETH 0x3Cffd56B47B7b41c56258D9C7731ABaDc360E073
Address – ETH 0x53b6936513e738f44FB50d2b9476730C0Ab3Bfc1
Chances are that the address now holding 33.568k ETH (0x35fB6f6DB4fb05e6A4cE86f2C93691425626d4b1) will soon be added to the list in the days to follow.
Ethereum Mixer, Tornado Cash, Adheres to Sanctions
Every since the hack happened in late March, the perpetrators of the Axie Infinity hack have been successfully using the popular Ethereum mixer of Tornado Cash to launder their ill-gotten wealth. The team at PeckShield has been actively tracking the movement of funds from a majority of Ethereum addresses linked to the hackers.
One such example can be found below, where 2,900 ETH was sent to Tornado Cash via an intermediary address that has yet to be added to the sanction list.
#PeckShieldAlert ~2,900 $ETH (~$8.7m) into @TornadoCash from @Ronin_Network exploiters
Intermediary address: 0xBc5639887283eaF1B8E966e0b2fa6998D2ec6404 pic.twitter.com/0HfGDEJ8Qp— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) April 15, 2022
The team at Tornado Cash has announced their commitment to adhere to the sanctioned list from the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury. However, the question now remains whether the OFAC can keep up with the speed at which the Lazarus group is continually moving the stolen funds to new addresses.