TempleDAO Hacker Moves Stolen Funds to Sanctioned Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash

According to data from block explorer, Etherscan, the attacker of the TempleDAO hack, has moved the funds stolen via the recently sanctioned crypto mixer, Tornado Cash.

This information was first disclosed by blockchain data firm on Sunday, PeckShield. A roughly amount of ETH was seen transferred from an address supposed to be that of the TempleDAO hacker to the Tornado Cash platform. The transaction started with a deposit of 0.1, and ETHoccurred place within hours on Sunday.

Tornado Cash is an Ethereum-based crypto mixer used to anonymize transactions on the Ethereum blockchain. In August, the platform got sanctioned by the United States Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Declaring that the crypto mixer is mainly associated with high-profile hacks such as the Ronin and Harmony breaches. Specifically, OFAC claimed the crypto mixer benefited North Korea's Lazarus Group and that the platform has been used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto since its launch.

Last week, TempleDAO, a protocol staking platform, suffered a hack on one of its staking vaults. As seen on Etherscan, the hacker made away with 1,830 ETH, which was roughly $2.3 million at the time. 

Notably, this hack comes amid the rise of cryptocurrency hacks this month. According to new data from Chainanalysis, October 2022 is the month with the most hacking activity ever. 

Source: Chainanalysis 

The data averred roughly 11 hacks amounting to $718 million happened this month alone. Chainanalysis stated, "At this rate, 2022 will likely surpass 2021 as the biggest year for hacking on record."

Last week, trading and lending platform Mango Market suffered an exploit which happened via an oracle price manipulation attack. In addition, on October 6, popular crypto exchange, Binance confirmed a BNB cross-chain bridge hack with Roughly $100 million of Binance Coin (BNB) stolen due to the exploit.