The OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) of the U.S. Treasury Department declared on Friday to sanction Blender.io (a crypto mixer) for being a contributor to fund laundering by the hack of Ronin Bridge of Axie Infinity. Lazarus Group (hackers sponsored on the behalf of North Korean government) have been detected to be included in the attack.
Brian E. Nelson – the Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence– stated that for the initial time the Treasury is authorizing a mixer for virtual currency. He added that they are taking measures to confront the illegitimate financial action on the behalf of DPRK and the state-sponsored theft would not be permitted by them nor would the money-launderers go unanswered.
According to the sanctions, the entirety of the property of Blender.io within the U.S. or in the U.S. persons’ possession is sealed and must be testified to OFAC. As per OFAC, $20.5M was processed by Blender.io out of nearly $620M which was stolen from the Vietnamese play-to-earn game in up to 173,600 ETH (Ether) and 25.5M USDC (USD Coin). During the investigation, it was additionally pointed out by OFAC that the ransomware groups related to Russia had also been facilitated by Blender.io taking into account Gandcrab, Sodinokibi, Ryuk, Conti, and Trinckbot.
At this time, the official website of Blender.io is offline without any activity. It was additionally mentioned by the Treasury agency that they have enlisted the addresses of Lazarus Group-based four wallets that were utilized in the process of money laundering to steal funds to the List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons.
On 29th March this year, Ronin Bridge turned to its official account on Twitter to disclose that the network’s security had been breached. It alerted its community in the respective tweet that its validators had been compromised. The respective hack took place on 23rd March, however, the discovery of the incident was done in the next week. Sky Mavis (a game developer) was utilized to access the bridge. The very institution had been thought to be Whitelisted previously.
Almost $150M was raised by Sky Mavis to reimburse consumers who were deprived of their money in the respective hack. In this effort, Binance (a prominent crypto exchange) remained successful in retrieving $5.8M out of the money stolen by 86 accounts. In April’s mid, OFAC identified the hackers to be linked to Lazarus Group.
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