The hacker behind last Friday’s $11 million hack on bitcoin bridge Garden has begun laundering stolen funds.
The initial hack was met with little sympathy from the crypto security community. Indeed, the team received sustained criticism over its perceived unwillingness to curtail Garden’s use by hackers, including North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
At the time of the hack, Garden stressed that the bridge itself wasn’t vulnerable. The losses were instead confined to an external solver who appeared to have suffered a private key compromise.
The transfers, flagged by blockchain security firm Certik, show funds flowing to the crypto mixing tool Tornado Cash in order to obscure their onward trajectory.
Mixers have long been controversial. They are seen by advocates as critical to maintain financial privacy on an otherwise transparent ledger.
Conversely, authorities have gone after developers for their use in obscuring illicit funds and money laundering.
Users deposit fixed numbers of tokens to avoid matching deposit and withdrawal amounts between addresses. However, users must exercise caution over when they choose to use a mixer as similar total amounts within similar periods can be matched to “deanonymize” usage.
Keonne Rodriguez, co-developer of Bitcoin-based equivalent Samourai Wallet was yesterday sentenced to five years for the same charge.
