“Treasury will continue to aggressively pursue actions against mixers that launder virtual currency for criminals and those who assist them.” “Despite public assurances otherwise, Tornado Cash has repeatedly failed to impose effective controls designed to stop it from laundering funds for malicious cyber actors on a regular basis and without basic measures to address its risks,” said Treasury Under Secretary Brian E. The Treasury also said Tornado was used by hackers to launder at least $7.8 million in stolen crypto funds during last week’s Nomad heist, which saw cybercriminals exploit a trivial bug to steal $100 million in crypto assets, including Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin, Tether, USD Coin and Dai.
North Korea has long used cryptocurrency-stealing operations, like ransomware, to fund its nuclear weapons program. previously linked Lazarus to the theft of $625 million in cryptocurrency from the Ronin Network, an Ethereum-based sidechain made for the popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, and more recently the $100 million theft from Harmony’s Horizon bridge. The laundered funds include $445 million stolen by the Lazarus Group, a notorious North Korean-backed hacking group that is already under U.S. Elliptic contrasted this figure with the $7 billion cited by the Treasury, writing that the higher number refers to the total value of cryptoassets that have been sent through Tornado Cash, which could include "legitimate uses of mixers such as Tornado, such as to preserve financial privacy." At least $1.5 billion in proceeds of crime such as ransomware, hacks and fraud have been laundered through Tornado Cash to date, a spokesperson for crypto analytics platform Elliptic told TechCrunch in an email.
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