The federal appeals court ruled against the US Treasury Department’s sanctions on Tornado Cash in a Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Tuesday, Nov. 26. The three-judge panel determined that the Treasury overstepped its legal authority by sanctioning the software itself rather than specific individuals or entities. The court found that the Tornado Cash...Read More
Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, will face trial on money laundering charges on December 2 in New York. This is after U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla rejected his motion to dismiss three charges brought against him by the U.S. Department of Justice. (DOJ) Judge Rejects Roman Storm’s Defense During a remote hearing on...Read More
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform Penpie, built on the Pendle network, reportedly suffered a major exploit on September 3, 2024. According to the real-time on-chain monitoring system Cyvers Alert, the hack led to the loss of at least $26 million in various wrapped and synthetic crypto assets. Details of the Attack Emerge The security surveillance company...Read More
The hacker responsible for the $230 million cyberattack on Indian crypto exchange WazirX has begun transferring stolen funds using Tornado Cash, a digital currency mixer sanctioned by the U.S. government. The move, which hides the trail of stolen assets, is the latest attempt by the perpetrator to launder the ill-gotten gains. $6.5 Million in Stolen...Read More
OKX is all set to deactivate accounts involved with sanctioned entities, including crypto mixer Tornado Cash and Moscow-based crypto exchange Garantex. On August 9th, OKX CEO Star Xu highlighted the platform’s strict adherence to compliance with international sanctions and clarified that such users will not be able to open accounts on the platform. OKX Enforces...Read More
Tornado Cash, the “crypto-mixing” protocol, has experienced a resurgence in 2024 after a significant decline in activity following the U.S. government’s sanctions two years ago. The sanctions, imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in August 2022, initially led to a drop in monthly deposits to Tornado Cash, with activity plunging by more...Read More
A Dutch court has denied bail for Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev, who was convicted of money laundering in May. This decision is a significant setback for Pertsev, who has been held in custody for the past two months without computer or internet access despite being requested in order to prepare for his defense. Pertsev...Read More
Popular crypto privacy protocol Railgun has successfully thwarted Inferno Drainer’s latest effort to launder stolen funds, which were sent back to the original wallet’s address. According to a July 10 post by SlowMist’s anti-money laundering tracking system, MistTrack on X, an attempt to launder over 174 ETH, worth around $533,000 at the time, was intercepted...Read More
Wallets linked to the CoinStats exploiter recently moved almost $1 million in Ether into the controversial crypto mixing protocol Tornado Cash. The latest development comes less than a week after the leading crypt tracker said that investigations are underway. Tornado Cash Inflow Blockchain security firm CertiK flagged that two wallets associated with the CoinStats exploit...Read More
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated 30 ETH, valued at around $113,000, to support the legal defense of Tornado Cash developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Storm through the decentralized fundraising platform Juicebox. According to the on-chain data, the transaction from an address linked to Buterin, named vitalik.eth, was made at 1:58 am EST on May 30...Read More
Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has been found guilty of laundering $1.2 billion in illicit funds using the sanctioned crypto mixer. Pertsev, a 31-year-old Russian living in the Netherlands, was sentenced to 64 months in prison by a Dutch court. His lawyers can appeal the decision within 14 days. Tornado Cash Developer’s Conviction The developer...Read More
The hacker behind the attack on cryptocurrency exchange Poloniex in November 2023 recently transferred over 1,100 Ether (ETH) to sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash. The hacker sent the Ether in batches while still holding over $180 million worth of assets across different blockchains. Poloniex Hacker Launders 1,120 ETH According to data from Arkham Intelligence, the...Read More
In August 2022, the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash, prohibiting its usage for US citizens, residents, and companies. But this has not deterred hackers from moving stolen funds through the controversial crypto tumbler to obfuscate tracking. In fact, PeckShield’s latest update reveals that exploiters of the...Read More
Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has been accused of laundering $1.2 billion of illicit funds through the OFAC-sanctioned platform, as per the latest report. Since his arrest in August 2022, Pertsev has dismissed the allegations of breaching money laundering laws. The latest indictment from the Netherlands claims that Pertsev was involved in money laundering on...Read More
Deposits made to Tornado Cash using IPFS gateways through IPFS gateways like – ipfs.io, cf-ipfs.com, and eth.link – may have been compromised, potentially exposing users’ deposited funds to risk, according to pseudonymous Tornado Cash developer ‘Gas404.’ Affected users were advised to take immediate action to safeguard their deposits. User Deposits Vulnerable According to a blog...Read More
A legal fund supporting the defense of Tornado Cash developers Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev has amassed over $350,000 in contributions and gained public backing from Edward Snowden, the former NSA whistleblower. Tornado Cash has been linked to North Korean hackers and the $600 million Ronin Network attack money laundering. Tornado Cash Legal Defense DAO...Read More
Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm has reportedly pleaded ‘not guilty,’ denying all charges related to money laundering exceeding $1 billion, including allegations connected to a cybercrime group associated with the North Korean government and violations of United States sanctions. Storm, who is a naturalized US citizen and the co-founder of the controversial coin mixer, was...Read More
Roman Storm – one of the co-founders of the crypto mixer Tornado Cash – is no longer detained, currently being out on bail. The US authorities arrested the individual earlier this week over allegations that his entity facilitated money laundering operations and was involved with the North Korean hacking collective – the Lazarus Group. ‘Disappointed...Read More
In an Aug. 23 statement on its website, OFAC indicated that it had added Roman Semenov, a Russian national who helped start Tornado Cash, to a list of people who are “specially designated nationals.” OFAC wrote down all of his known email addresses and his Ethereum (ETH) wallets. Tornado Cash Co-Founders Facing Money Laundering Charge...Read More
Tornado Cash, the most well-known crypto mixing service, was sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last August. The decision was the result of a long-lasting spat between the regulator and the crypto mixer dating back to at least 2018 when two persons of special interest to the U.S. government were found...Read More
Popular crypto mixer Tornado Cash lost total control of its governance to an attacker who deployed a malicious contract to access thousands of votes. The incident was first detected by @samczsun, a researcher at web3-focused investment firm Paradigm, over the weekend. According to samczsun’s tweet, the attacker claimed to have used the same logic as...Read More
Alexey Pertsev, the developer of crypto privacy mixer Tornado Cash, will be released from jail next week and await trial at home, according to a report from Blockworks. The news reportedly comes from Eléonore Blanc, Pertsev’s wife, who claimed over Telegram that the developer would be coming home next week. Pertsev was arrested in Amsterdam...Read More
Tornado Cash has, once again, found itself as the nexus of pilfered funds from a DeFi protocol. An Ethereum wallet address associated with the exploiter of the DAO Maker breach from 2021 sent $600,000 worth of DAI stablecoin through the controversial coin mixer. According to the blockchain security firm, PeckShield, the wallet had been dormant...Read More
On-chain analyst Lookonchain detected an address tied to the exploiter of the Ethereum-based lending protocol sent 100 Ether (approximately $171,700) to a wallet associated with Lazarus Group’s mammoth Ronin network hack. While it is still unclear if the Euler exploiter is affiliated with the North Korean state-sponsored cyber threat group linked to the North Korean...Read More
Coin mixers, which allow users to obfuscate their transactions, have been the target of law enforcement agencies across the world. ChipMixer is the latest one to face a similar crackdown. In an operation conducted by German and US authorities, and backed by the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol), police seized four servers,...Read More
Lendhub, a relatively small cross-chain crypto lending platform operating on HECO, was exploited to the tune of $6 million dollars earlier this January. Attack Possible Solely Due to Poor Coding The attack was carried out due to a poorly-executed removal of a deprecated IBSV cToken. Its replacement, which was already active, had an identical price...Read More
Privacy tools have always been heralded as a key to financial freedom in the crypto industry. In the Ethereum ecosystem, discussions surrounding the subject matter have revolved mostly around privacy-preserving transfers of ETH and mainstream ERC20 tokens. In a bid to improve the state of privacy on the network, its co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed...Read More
The Office of Foreign Assets Control’s (OFAC) tryst with the crypto industry dates back to 2018 when it designated two Iran-based individuals of malicious cyber activity. There has been no looking back since. More recently, the bombshell announcement that the US Treasury Department banned American citizens from using Tornado Cash, has had industry leaders abuzz....Read More
Alexey Pertsev – developer of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash – will reportedly remain in jail until late February 2023. The Dutch Crime Agency (FIOD) arrested the man in August this year after the US Treasury Department previously sanctioned Tornado Cash for enabling money-laundering procedures. According to a recent CoinDesk coverage, Pertsev will stay in...Read More
The US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) assigned popular crypto tumbler Tornado Cash as an entity on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanction list last month which triggered an outcry from privacy and free speech advocates. Subsequently, Microsoft-owned GitHub removed its source code as well as terminated the user accounts of three individuals who...Read More
