Millions in Stolen Cryptocurrency Being Laundered by KelpDAO Hackers

Following the $290 million KelpDAO heist, the perpetrators are now initiating the laundering process of their illicitly obtained funds, as revealed by ZachXBT's on-chain analysis and data from Arkham. On Tuesday, during European hours, the wallet controlling the exploit proceeds made two Ethereum blockchain transfers totaling $117 million and $58 million. According to ZachXBT, a portion of the stolen funds has begun crossing over to other chains, with approximately $1.5 million being transferred from Ethereum to Bitcoin via Thorchain, and an additional $78,000 routed through Umbra, a privacy protocol. Notably, North Korea's Lazarus Group has previously employed similar protocols, such as Thorchain, for laundering purposes. The use of cross-chain transactions and privacy tools at this stage suggests that the attacker is preparing to further distribute the funds across multiple platforms. As one of the most significant breaches in the decentralized finance sector in recent months, the KelpDAO exploit has sparked widespread negative sentiment and raised concerns about potential contagion effects on other blockchains. In response to the hack, Arbitrum, a layer 2 network, announced on Monday that it had frozen $71 million in ether linked to the breach, which may pressure the hacker to accelerate their efforts to move and launder the remaining funds.