Millions in Stolen Cryptocurrency Being Laundered by KelpDAO Hackers

According to on-chain analyst ZachXBT and data from Arkham, the perpetrators of the $290 million KelpDAO heist have initiated the laundering process of their illicitly obtained funds. On Tuesday, during European hours, the wallet controlling the exploit proceeds made two transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, valued at $117 million and $58 million, as reported by Arkham. Furthermore, ZachXBT discovered that a portion of the stolen funds is being transferred across different chains, with approximately $1.5 million being bridged from Ethereum to Bitcoin via Thorchain, and an additional $78,000 routed through the Umbra privacy protocol. Notably, North Korean hacking group Lazarus has previously employed similar protocols, such as Thorchain, for laundering purposes. The utilization of cross-chain routing and privacy tools during the initial 'layering' stage of money laundering suggests that the attacker may be preparing to further distribute the funds across multiple platforms. The KelpDAO exploit is one of the most significant breaches in the decentralized finance sector in recent months, triggering a wave of negative sentiment and concerns about potential contagion spreading to other blockchains. In response to the hack, Layer 2 network Arbitrum announced on Monday that it had frozen $71 million in ether linked to the breach, a move that may pressure the exploiter to accelerate their efforts to transfer and launder the remaining funds.