US services are no longer messing around with cryptocurrencies, especially when it comes to whitening silver. L’Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury Department falls this time with short arms on the blender Tornado Cash.
Tornado Cash wet with the North Korean hackers of the Lazarus group?
In a press release published on August 8, 2022, theOffice of Foreign Assets Control from the United States publicly accuses the blockchain transaction mixer (mixer) Tornado Cash.
This mixing service, operating on the network Ethereum (ETH), is accused of allowing the whitening over $7 billion of cryptocurrencies since its inception in 2019. This would include 455 million dollars stolen by the Lazarus Group. The latter is a group of “state hijackers”led by the North Korea.
“Despite public claims to the contrary, Tornado Cash has repeatedly failed to impose effective controls designed to preventmalicious cyber actors to launder funds (…). The Treasury will continue to take aggressive action against mixers that launder digital currency to criminals and those who help them. »
Brian E. Nelson, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
At the end of June, these are the 100 million from the Harmony hack who had switched to Tornado Cash. The US Treasury now seems signal the end of the game for one of Ethereum’s most popular mixing services.
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