Millions in Stolen Cryptocurrency Being Laundered by KelpDAO Hackers

Following the KelpDAO exploit, in which $290 million was stolen, the perpetrators have initiated the laundering process of their illicit gains, as indicated by on-chain analyst ZachXBT and data from Arkham. On Tuesday, during European hours, the wallet controlling the exploit's proceeds made two transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, totaling $117 million and $58 million. According to ZachXBT, a portion of the stolen funds has been transferred across 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 protocols like Thorchain for laundering purposes. The use of cross-chain routing and privacy tools in the early stages of laundering suggests that the attacker may be preparing to further disperse the funds across multiple platforms. The KelpDAO breach is one of the most significant decentralized finance incidents in recent months, triggering a wave of negative sentiment and contagion fears across the DeFi sector. In response, Layer 2 network Arbitrum has frozen $71 million in ether linked to the hack, potentially pressuring the exploiter to accelerate their efforts to move and launder the remaining funds.