Millions in Stolen Cryptocurrency Laundered by KelpDAO Hackers

Following the $290 million KelpDAO exploit, the perpetrators are now laundering their stolen funds, as revealed by on-chain analyst ZachXBT and data from Arkham. On Tuesday, during European hours, the wallet controlling the exploit proceeds made two significant transfers of $117 million and $58 million on the Ethereum blockchain. According to ZachXBT, a portion of the stolen funds has started moving 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 - a tactic previously employed by North Korean hacking group Lazarus. The use of cross-chain routing and privacy tools in the initial 'layering' stage of money laundering suggests that the attacker is preparing to further distribute the funds across multiple platforms. The KelpDAO breach is one of the most significant DeFi 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.