On 17th Jan, there was a security problem that was flagged by Crypto.com that caused an indefinite freeze on all withdrawals. Later on, the exchange announced that a group of hackers had stolen about 15 million dollars in ETH tokens off the exchange.
The total stolen tokens amount to about 33 million dollars but have pledged to get the money back. But before they even made the statement, many security experts and crypto enthusiasts were tracking fraudulent activity that they had pinpointed to Tornado Cash.
They are one of the few “smart contract tokens” that use a few crypto mixing protocols, which can make the transaction history more opaque than before. This raises the question about the credibility of mixing services. Although used by people and hackers alike, it is used so that not everyone can track your transaction history.
You do not want this kind of information to be accessible to all as it can spell trouble for you over the years. Its core principle might be put in place to help hide their immediate transaction history, but illicit use has been on the rise.
Further investigation into the matter revealed that this is not the first time Tornado Cash was involved in something like this. In December itself, a few hackers used the service by Tornado Cash to steal $196 million worth of tokens from Bitmart.
Tornado Cash has serviced more than 10 billion dollars since its inception, but there has been a rising number of cases against it.
