After dormant monies from the December Orbit Chain were seen flowing through Tornado Cash, a well-known blockchain anonymizer, cryptocurrency investors are in a whirl. After months of silence, the hack—which stole an astounding $48 million (since expanded to $121 million due to market swings)—had gone silent and many people thought the ill-gotten gains were gathering dust in a digital vault.
Elusive Hacker Strikes Again
🚨ONGOING: $100M Orbit Chain Exploiter sends $32M to Tornado Cash after 5 months silence
In the past hour, the Orbit Chain Exploiter moved 8671 ETH ($32M) to a new address and is currently in the process of depositing it to Tornado Cash.
They stole over $100M in ETH and DAI… pic.twitter.com/Bq7BRdXqmc
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel) June 8, 2024
Orbit Chain Hack: Motive Unclear
Orbit Chain itself have not exactly been very forthcoming with material. Though guarantees that they are collaborating with authorities help to clarify the source of the hack remains under wraps. The protocol has also neglected user worries regarding possible repayment, which has left many investors stranded in the digital sphere.
This episode highlights the natural weaknesses in DeFi systems. Lack of regulatory supervision puts investors at risk even if they show an attractive picture of distributed finance.
Now hidden under a digital smokescreen, the search for the missing millions has become much more difficult.
Crypto Crime On The Rise
Recent figures reveal that hackers stole $540 million in digital assets in the first quarter of 2024 among a worrying pattern of rising bitcoin theft. This increases by 42% from the same period previous year. With its distributed exchanges, the over $100 billion in total value locked (TVL) business, Decentralised Finance (DeFi), is especially susceptible.
DeFi was the main target for attacks in Q1, according a web3 bug bounty site, suggesting notable security flaws as compared to Centralised Finance (CeFi) systems.
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Of these losses, most were caused by hacks—96%—while fraud only accounted for 4%. The most targeted blockchains were Ethereum and BNB Chain; Ethereum suffered over thirty separate attacks.
Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView