Millions in Stolen Cryptocurrency Being Laundered by KelpDAO Hackers, Data Reveals

According to on-chain analyst ZachXBT and data from Arkham, the perpetrators of the $290 million KelpDAO heist have initiated the process of laundering their illicitly obtained funds. Arkham's data indicates that the wallet controlling the exploit's proceeds executed two transactions totaling $117 million and $58 million on the Ethereum blockchain during European business hours on Tuesday. Furthermore, ZachXBT discovered that a portion of the stolen cryptocurrency has started to be transferred across different chains, with roughly $1.5 million being bridged from Ethereum to Bitcoin via Thorchain, in addition to $78,000 being routed through the Umbra privacy protocol. Notably, North Korean hacking group Lazarus has previously employed protocols like Thorchain for money laundering purposes. The utilization of cross-chain routing and privacy tools during the initial 'layering' phase of laundering suggests that the attacker may be preparing to further distribute the funds across multiple platforms. The KelpDAO breach is one of the most significant decentralized finance hacks in recent months, prompting widespread negative sentiment across the DeFi sector and raising concerns about potential contagion spreading to other blockchains. In a related development, Layer 2 network Arbitrum announced on Monday that it had frozen approximately $71 million in ether linked to the hack, a move that could pressure the exploiter to expedite their efforts to transfer and launder the remaining funds