Hackers Converted Stolen Funds to Ether as The Asset’s Price Tanked

Hackers who grabbed hundreds of millions from 2022’s Nomad bridge hack capitalized on Ether (ETH) price drop to buy large amounts of the asset at a low price. 

They exchanged 39.75 million DAI for 16,892 ETH on August 5. ETH had dropped by over 20% in 12 hours, going from $2,760 to $2,172, which the hackers took advantage of.

Lookonchain, an analytics firm analyzing on-chain activity, posted about the incident on X, “The #Nomad Bridge Exploiter spent 39.75M $DAI to buy 16,892 $ETH an hour ago and is depositing $ETH to http://Tornado.Cash.” 

https://twitter.com/lookonchain/status/1820332406911672320

Tornado Cash, a crypto mixer, allows users to obfuscate their fund flows, which cybercriminals leverage to evade law enforcement agencies.

Another blockchain analytics firm, PeckShield, took to X to offer more details about the hacker’s activities, “#PeckShieldAlert #NomadBridge Exploiter-labeled address has transferred 39.75M $DAI & 17.75 $ETH to an intermediary address 0x663a…f448. 

The $DAI was swapped for 16.89K $ETH, & 2.4K $ETH (worth ~ $7M) was transferred to #Tornadocash.” 

Alongside the 17.75 ETH sent to an intermediary wallet and the ETH received from exchanging the stolen DAI in the same address, the hacker moved 2,400 ETH to Tornado Cash.

That was not it. Another hacker who successfully exploited the Pancake Bunny protocol in 2021 through a flash loan attack for $45 million also exchanged their stolen DAI for ETH. 

They swapped 7.8 million DAI tokens for 2,922 ETH as its price plummeted. However, the hacker may have also locked away a significant amount of funds forever due to an error. 

They sent 3.6 million DAI to a contract that does not support the asset, which may mean they may have irrecoverably lost the tokens.

Furthermore, this hacker previously used Tornado Cash to obfuscate $2.9 million of ETH on July 8. They may move more through the mixer soon.