Hands in the cryptocurrency market every day, cybercrime and money laundering are common, with one of the most well-known examples being the cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash (TORN).
As it happens, Tornado Cash is embroiled in a scandal involving the North Korean-sponsored Lazarus Group's attacks on Ethereum (ETH) blockchain bridges, notably Harmony's Horizon bridge.
To make matters worse for the mixer, recent data from one of the blockchain security firm's 2022 Mid-Year Blockchain Security and AML Analysis Report suggests that Tornado Cash has received 74.7% of the cash or upto 300,160 ETH on the Ethereum network.
About 24% of the remaining funds (95,570 ETH) are still in hackers' wallets, while 1.5% (6,250 ETH) have been transferred to a trading platform.
Source of the initial funding for the attacks
Furthermore, it is found that Tornado Cash accounts for a majority of the initial funding for money laundering instances on the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks.
According to the reports, suspicious withdrawals linked to these security incidents occurred via crypto exchanges, certain trading platforms, and even individuals' personal crypto wallets.
Tornado Cash and its use in money laundering
Notably, Tornado Cash appears to have been used to launder approximately $7 billion in digital assets since its inception in 2019, including those stolen by the Lazarus Group, prompting the US Treasury Department to sanction the mixing service in early August.
However, the circumstances that have led to this conclusion may deteriorate, since blockchain specialists, including a former FBI intelligence analyst, have projected that the North Korean crypto hacking problem would worsen.
As CoinGabbar earlier reported, Tornado Cash was priorly used to launder $80 million in digital assets stolen from the Ethereum-based stablecoin platform Beanstalk Farms in a mid-April flash loan incident.
