Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge Hacker Starts to Shift Looted ETH

The hacker who drained $601 million in the Axie Infinity Ronin Bridge exploit has started to redistribute the loot.

The address of the hacker who stole $610 million in the Ronin_Network case began to move, transferring 1000 ETH to another address and then 200 ETH to TornadoCash. https://t.co/7RYHCmwght

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— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 4, 2022

Etherscan transaction data suggests that the hacker executed 24 transactions. And the Wu Blockchain reported that the hacker transferred 1,000 ETH to another address, and 200 ETH to TornadoCash.

The balance of this particular wallet under the tag Ronin Bridge Exploiter 8 now stands at 0.109 ETH, worth only $376.

In total, the unknown hacker stole 173,600 Ethereum and 25.5 million USDC stablecoins in the exploit. Meanwhile, another wallet under the tag Ronin Bridge Exploiter has a balance of 173,912.76 ETH.

Hackers have turned to crypto mixers to hide their digital footprint as they move their loot. Chainalysis had reported earlier this year that while centralized exchanges were majorly used to convert the crypto loot into fiat, that has changed since 2018. Citing the Spartan Protocol hack that occurred in May 2021, Chainalysis had explained that the hacker had also sent the stolen funds to Tornado Cash, a mixer for the Ethereum blockchain.

Tornado Cash provides private and anonymous transactions for Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens by breaking the on-chain link between source and destination addresses.

Ronin Bridge enables cross-chain transfers to and from Sky Mavis’ Axie Infinity ecosystem. The Ronin Network attack has now become one of the largest DeFi breaches, surpassing the Poly Network attack that occurred in Aug 2021. 

Axie COO “committed to reimbursing” players

However, Sky Mavis’ COO Aleksander Leonard Larsen was quick to state that they are “fully committed to reimbursing” the players who have lost in the hack. He also took to Twitter to state that more updates regarding recovery and reimbursement are coming “shortly”.

Still here.
Still working.

Appreciate your patience! pic.twitter.com/4Ym2wrh09W

— Psycheout – Aleksander | Axie Infinity (@Psycheout86) April 4, 2022

Since the incident, Axie Infinity’s AXS token has recovered slightly. At the time of writing, it is trading at $65, up around a dollar from last week but still down around 4%.

The platform has announced it is working with Chainalysis to monitor the theft. DeFi teams often turn to Chainalysis API to check that protocols are not used for money laundering.