A total of $3.2 million worth of ether stolen from the popular South Korean cryptocurrency exchangE Upbit have reportedly already been laundered via small transactions sent to various other cryptocurrency exchanges.
According to a recently published report, citing data from Uppala Security’s Sentinel Protocol, a total of 20,520 ETH that was stolen from the cryptocurrency exchange has already been laundered, as the address to which the stolen funds were initially sent to has moved them and sent small transactions to various other trading platforms.
Per the report, these trading platforms including exchanges like Binance, Huobi, Bittrex, Bitfinex, and several decentralized exchanges. Uppsala’s President Patrick Kim was quoted in the report saying it believes the hackers are still looking to launder the rest of the 342,000 stolen ETH.
We believe that the hackers continue to launder money through exchanges without any sanctions standing in their way.
As CryptoGlobe reported, in November of last year the South Korean exchange Upbit confirmed hackers managed to steal about $49 million worth of Ethereum from its hot wallet, and quickly reacted to the situation by moving all cryptoasset from its hot to its cold wallets.
The exchange also suspended deposits and withdrawals to look into the situation, and only reopened them for Ethereum earlier this week after improving its security. Users were told to update their wallets and not send them to the old address as it could lead to a complicated and costly recovery process.
The original address the hacked ETH was moved to now holds less than $10 worth of the cryptocurrency, while some addresses associated with the theft still hold large amounts. While some speculated the small transactions to exchanges were simply a test, Kim claimed the transactions had the sole purpose of laundering the funds.
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