Nomad Bridge hacker moves 14,500 Ethereum ($35.2M) to Tornado Cash

According to details shared by PeckShieldAlert, the wallet associated with the Nomad Bridge hack recently moved 14,500 Ethereum to Tornado Cash. The funds were moved almost two years after the hack.

The value of the moved funds was around $35.2 million with the current ETH price. The movement suggests the hackers may be moving to obscure the source of the funds ahead of cashing out their loot. The recent movement follows another transaction that occurred on August 5. On that occasion, the hackers used the stolen funds to purchase 16,892 ETH during a dramatic market dip when ETH fell as low as $2,100.

#PeckShieldAlert #NomadBridge exploiter-labeled address has transferred 14.5K $ETH (worth ~$35.2M) to #Tornadocash pic.twitter.com/beiYFxsAPb

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) August 8, 2024

Tornado Cash grows in popularity among hackers

Although it was created to offer services to legit crypto users, Tornado Cash has become the go-to tool for money launderers. It is especially popular among hackers because it makes it extremely challenging to identify the source of the funds sent into the tool.

PeckShield data also revealed that the hackers behind crypto exchange Rain had also begun moving funds through Tornado Cash.

The movement of Ethereum by the Nomad Bridge hackers comes at a time when Ethereum is lagging in comparison to Bitcoin in terms of recovery. ETH had managed to reclaim the $2,500 mark yesterday, but it proved to be short-lived. BTC, on the other hand, has been on a steady upward movement since its recovery from the $49,000 level.

QCP Capital mentioned in their recent analysis that Ethereum continues to underperform as Jump Trading persists with its ETH liquidations. They also stated that they are bullish on BTC as they see major call buying in December and March expiries.

The Nomad Bridge hack

2022 had a lot of incidents of prominent DeFi hacks, including the Ronin Bridge and Wormhole Bridge hacks. On August 1, 2022, Nomad Bridge suffered an exploit and lost $190 million in the attack.

The stolen funds were primarily in the digital assets of USDC, WETH, WBTC, and CQT. Following the attack, hundreds of copycats executed the same transactions using the exploit where a flawed validated process allowed anyone to withdraw funds if they entered a specific set of data. The Nomad Bridge team managed to recover $38.9 million of the stolen funds.