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 for more than 200 days.
- The movement was detected nearly seven months after another wallet linked with the exploiter transferred $500,000 worth of DAI using Tornado Cash.
- For the uninitiated, DAO Maker, a fundraising platform for crypto projects (no relation to the more widely known MakerDAO), was exploited in August 2021, draining over $7 million.
- The attacker was able to access the platform’s balance by taking advantage of a bug in DAO Maker’s contract affecting over 5,000 accounts holding USDC.
- Hacks have continued to wreak havoc in the decentralized finance space. Malicious entities targeted these protocols as the crypto market went through another bull run in 2021.
- DeFi protocols went on to become by far the biggest victims of hacks, accounting for over 82% of all digital assets stolen by hackers the following year.
- Throughout 2022, DeFi protocols recorded a loss of $3.1 billion, up from 73.3% in 2021.
- The latest development comes in the backdrop of an exploit on the popular centralized crypto exchange Bitrue. which reported a loss of $23 million worth of digital assets in the process.