The Treasury Department issued sanctions Monday against a cryptocurrency service that has allowed North Korean hackers and others to launder billions of dollars worth of digital tokens stolen in virtual heists.
Treasury penalizes crypto service that laundered funds for North Koreans
“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,” Brian Nelson, Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said in a statement.
Just in the last several months, cybercriminals used Tornado Cash to wash crypto funds stolen in a series of high-profile hacks, Treasury said.
The Lazarus Group, a cybercriminal gang that international investigators have said is a key funding source for the North Korean weapons program, used the service to process more than $455 million they stole in April in the largest crypto heist to date. Hackers laundered more than $96 million from the June attack on the Harmony blockchain bridge — and at least another $7.8 million from the hack of the Nomad bridge last week.
The sanctions mark the Biden administration’s second such move targeting a mixer. In May, it blacklisted a program called Blender, which the Lazarus Group also employed. “Treasury will continue to aggressively pursue actions against mixers that launder virtual currency for criminals and those who assist them,” Nelson said.
The services are on track for a record year with cybercriminals, according to a July report by the blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. It found 23 percent of the funds sent to mixers this year have come from illicit crypto wallets, up from 12 percent in 2021.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
Source: WP
