The Ronin hackers have recently made great headlines in the crypto market. However, for those who do not know about the Ronin bridge hack, a brief outline might be helpful. Hackers gained access to private validator keys and drained out 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) from the bridge in March. In fact, the total value of all the stolen assets stood at over $620 million at the time of the drainage. The drainage of such a huge asset already made the Ronin hackers hot topics of discussion in the crypto world.
However, more interesting is the way in which the hackers have channelised the entire fund after the drainage. In fact, in recent times, hackers and scammers are using innovative techniques to drain crypto assets. Therefore, it is quite expected that such a huge scam will show instances of hard effort from the hackers. In fact, in order to remain anonymous, the Ronin hackers are using Bitcoin privacy tools to spread out the stolen funds.
If you are interested to know more about the way in which the hackers are using the Bitcoin privacy tools, then this article is the perfect stop for you. Keep reading this article to know more about the activities of the Ronin hackers.
Ronin Hackers are Using Bitcoin Privacy Tools
Since draining out over $620 million worth of crypto assets from Ronin bridge, the hackers have already transferred a lion’s share of the stolen funds into Bitcoin, from Ether. However, what is more interesting, is that the Ronin hackers are using Bitcoin privacy tools Blender and ChipMixer, as well as renBTC in this process of transferring the stolen funds. The main motive behind using these tools is to remain anonymous.
However, ₿liteZero, an on-chain investigator, has tracked down the activity of the hackers. In fact, ₿liteZero works for SlowMist and has made notable contributions to the 2022 Mid-Year Blockchain Security report of the company. They have been instrumental in tracking the transaction pathways of the Ronin hackers since the scam.
According to the findings of ₿liteZero, the hackers originally converted the stolen funds into Ethereum. Then the fund was sent to Tornado Cash, an Ethereum crypto mixer. Afterwards, the Ronin hackers bridged over the fund to the Bitcoin network. In fact, they took the help of the Ren protocol to convert the funds into BTC. Follow the link below to see the tweet of ₿liteZero, where the entire transaction pathway of the hackers has been charted:
The report states that on the 28th of March, the Ronin hackers initially transferred 6,249 ETH to Huobi with 5,028 ETH and FTX with 1,219 ETH. Interestingly, both these are centralised exchanges. From these exchanges, a total of 6,249 ETH were converted to Bitcoin. After that, the infamous hackers transferred 439 BTC, or $20.5 million to Blender, a privacy tool.
In addition, the hackers also utilised decentralized exchanges Uniswap and 1inch to convert around 113,000 ETH to renBTC. After that, they distributed around 6,631 BTC among a variety of centralized exchanges and decentralized protocols.
Concluding Lines
That is all about the latest findings about the Ronin hackers. They are believed to be the Lazarus Group of North Korea. A look at the Twitter post by ₿liteZero will further clarify the scene.
Also read: Peter McCormack Signs Bitcoin On The Team Sheet For His Real Bedford
