Hackers who exploited the Heco Bridge last year laundered more than 40,000 ether – worth $145.7 million – through Tornado Cash over the past eight days, according to data from the chain.
The Heco bridge is used for moving money between Ethereum ETH
-3.34%
and the Heco Chain – a blockchain set up by the HTX exchange (formerly Huobi). Tornado Cash is a cryptocurrency mixer that provides privacy by obscuring the origins and destinations of Ethereum transactions.
“As of today (March 22, 2024, UTC), HECO bridge operators have transferred ~$40,391.8 ETH (equivalent to ~$145.7 million) to Tornado Cash in the last 8 days,” says the blockchain security and data firm analytics company PeckShield. Posted on X.
HTX also had an influence
The November 2023 Heco Bridge hack resulted in a loss of approximately $111 million on the day of the exploit, according to PeckShield. The funds – including ether, USDT, USDC and HBTC – were immediately sent to decentralized exchanges and sold for other tokens, The Block previously reported.
Wintermute research head Igor Igamberdiev suggested there was an additional exploit from HTX at the time, citing suspicious transfers of $23.4 million. He said these transactions showed similar patterns to those in the Heco Bridge exploit and occurred shortly afterwards. HTX has also started moving funds from another hot wallet to a so-called recovery wallet and has temporarily disabled deposits and withdrawals.
“HTX and Heco cross-chain bridge suffer a hacker attack. HTX will fully compensate the losses in HTX’s hot wallet. Deposits and withdrawals temporarily suspended. All funds in HTX are safe and the community can rest easy. We are investigating the specific reasons for the hacker attack,” HTX advisor Justin Sun said at the time, confirming the analysis. It followed a hack of 5,000 ETH on HTX in September 2023.
Earlier this week, Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was accused of laundering $1.2 billion in illegal money through the platform, according to an indictment in the Netherlands. Pertsev is currently awaiting trial in the country on March 26 on charges related to money laundering and other financial crimes.
The Block contacted HTX, Heco Chain and Justin Sun for comment.
Disclaimer: Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and CEO of Wintermute, previously served on The Block’s board of directors from April 2023 to early November 2023 and remains a minority shareholder.
