New Activity Seen On Address Linked To Ronin Network Attack

Twitter user, Wu Blockchain, announced on Twitter on May 18 that “the address related to the Ronin Network attacker has just transferred 5505.7 ETH out.”

The user also added that “according to OKLink, the relevant address has been transferred out 7 times since May 14, with a total of 23,525.5 ETH, and transferred to Tornado Cash at 100 ETH per transaction.

The bridge that connects the Ronin Network to the Ethereum mainnet was exploited on March 13 2022, with about $622 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) and USDC stablecoin stolen in the process. Although the breach happened on March 23, it was only discovered on March 29.

On April 14 the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office tied the North Korea-based hacking group, Lazarus, to the breach.The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added an Ethereum wallet address (0x098B716B8Aaf21512996dC57EB0615e2383E2f96) associated with Lazarus to its sanctions list.

To this date, around $5.8 million worth of funds have been recovered.

What makes Wu Blockchain’s announcement so significant is the fact that the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) added the wallets to its list of sanctions tied to the state-sponsored Lazarus.

Another important fact to consider is the fact that Tornado Cash, a transaction mixing service that makes it more difficult to trace the movement of cryptocurrency between wallets, has also announced that it will block any wallet addresses listed on OFAC’s sanction list.

Unfortunately, the Ronin Network attacker was still able to transfer 5505.7 ETH out on May 18 this year.