Elliptic, a prominent blockchain surveillance company, is now claiming that there is a high probability the attackers of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX were from Russia. The firm says the story that FTX ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was behind the attack could be false, given that he was in a courtroom without internet access on October 4 when roughly $14.5 million of the stolen funds was moved.
In a blog post, Elliptic provided a summary of the stolen crypto’s on-chain movements. Since the attack, most of the funds have been bridged to the Bitcoin network. The attackers used ChipMixer to obscure the transactions until March this year, when the US Department of Justice shut down the unlicensed Bitcoin mixer.
According to the blockchain surveillance company’s findings, a significant portion of the stolen money was combined with crypto assets from Russia-based criminal organizations, including darknet markets and ransomware gangs, before being transferred to centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
The $477 Million Attack on FTX
On the day FTX announced it had filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2022, the crypto trading platform saw over 9,450 ETH stolen by unknown attackers. A few days later, it was discovered that the exploiters had also stolen other cryptocurrencies like Wrapped Bitcoin, USDT and Pax Gold, amounting to about $477 million.
While there are exchanges that managed to freeze some of the stolen funds, Elliptic says the hackers were able to swap a significant amount to other crypto assets and bridged them to various blockchains.
On November 21, exploiters used RenBridge to bridge over 60,000 ETH to Bitcoin and then sent the funds to ChipMixer. Ironically, RenBridge is included in FTX’s balance sheet, which means the fallen crypto exchange owned the bridging protocol.
Hackers Move More Stolen Funds
In July 2023, the hackers used THORSwap to bridge $120 million worth of ETH to Bitcoin. It is worth mentioning that THORSwap has since temporarily halted its operations to address the rising concerns over money laundering. With ChipMixer sanctioned, the exploiters turned to Sinbad, a crypto mixer that Elliptic is convinced the Blender’s team is behind it. Blender was shut down by the United States Treasury Department on the grounds that it helped the notorious criminal group Lazarus launder illicit money.
SureTradeGroup.com is not responsible for the content, accuracy, quality, advertising, products or any other content posted on the site. Some of the content on this site is paid content that is not written or posted by our writers or editors and the opinions expressed do not reflect the opinions of this website. Any disagreement you may have with brands or companies mentioned in articles will need to be taken care of directly with those specific brands and companies. The responsibility of anyone who may click links in our articles and ultimately sign up for that product or service is their own. Forex, Stocks, Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and Dogital Tokens are all a high-risk asset, investing in them can lead to losses. Readers should do their own research before taking any action.