- A Hacker stole $11 million from the Bitcoin bridge Garden last Friday and has started laundering the funds.
- Over $6 million has been transferred from the hacker’s Ethereum and BNB Chain addresses into the crypto mixer Tornado Cash.
- The hacker’s accounts still hold about $500,000 in Ethereum-compatible assets and $1.8 million in Solana tokens.
- The initial attack involved a compromised private key linked to an external solver, not the Garden bridge itself.
- Tornado Cash is a non-custodial service used to obscure fund movements but has faced legal action for money laundering concerns.
Last Friday, a hacker targeted the bitcoin bridge Garden, stealing $11 million. The stolen funds have since begun moving through laundering processes to hide their origin.
More than $6 million, in ether and Binance Coin (BNB), was transferred from the hacker’s Ethereum and BNB Chain addresses into Tornado Cash, a crypto mixing service designed to obscure transaction histories. As of now, the hacker still holds under $500,000 in other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) assets and around $1.8 million in Solana tokens, linked to their Solana account.
The breach did not exploit the Garden bridge itself. Instead, the funds were lost through an external solver, which Garden said likely suffered a private key compromise. Despite the company’s assurances, blockchain investigators doubted the solver’s independence, suggesting potential connections to the hacker. The transfers were flagged by blockchain security firm Certik, indicating funds were routed to Tornado Cash to conceal their flow.
Crypto mixers like Tornado Cash allow users to deposit fixed amounts of tokens to break links between sender and receiver addresses, so transactions become harder to trace. While these tools promote privacy, regulators have pursued their developers due to their use in criminal money laundering. Tornado Cash addresses were sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2022, although restrictions were lifted this year. Nonetheless, co-founder Roman Storm was convicted in August for operating an unlicensed money transmission service. Similarly, Bitcoin-based mixer co-developer Keonne Rodriguez received a five-year sentence recently.
Other privacy platforms include Railgun and Privacy Pools, offering features to verify the legitimacy of withdrawals, unlike typical mixers. These services aim to balance user privacy with regulatory compliance challenges in decentralized finance.
For further details, see the original reports on the Ethereum address, BNB Chain address, the EVM profile, and the Solana account. Additional coverage is available from Protos on the Garden hack and Tornado Cash legal actions.
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