On Thursday, approximately $9.5 million worth of Ethereum was stolen from the Ronin sidechain network wallets, with funds routed through crypto mixer Tornado Cash.
Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin, co-founder of Ronin Network and Axie Infinity creator Sky Mavis, tweeted that his personal Ronin wallets were compromised in the security breach.
“This has been a tough morning for me. Two of my addresses have been compromised,” wrote Zirlin. While the attack impacted his accounts, he assured that it was limited in scope and unrelated to Ronin or Sky Mavis operations.
Fellow Sky Mavis co-founder Aleksander “Psycheout” Larsen echoed that confirmation, tweeting that the Ronin bridge and network were not compromised. He described it as a wallet breach that commonly occurs across blockchains.Â
Security firm PeckShield traced the stolen funds to a hack of a “whale wallet” on Ronin containing around 3,248 Ether worth $9.7 million at the time of theft.
While alarming, this latest incident is an isolated wallet hack rather than a systemic vulnerability. In the past, Ronin suffered a $625 million exploit by the North Korea-backed Lazarus hacking group.Â
By utilizing Tornado Cash, a mixer obscuring transaction sources, the thieves likely aimed to cover their tracks and cash out the stolen Ethereum anonymously.
Law enforcement will attempt to trace the laundered funds, but major mixing services like Tornado Cash pose significant challenges for tracking and recovery.
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