Drift exploiter sends $61M ETH to Tornado Cash, holds $194M
Written by Zoltan Vardaistaff writerEdited by Yohan Yunstaff editorThe April 1 hack caused about $295 million in losses and was later attributed to a North Korean threat group in a Mandiant investigation.
A wallet linked to the Drift Protocol hack sent about $61 million in Ether (ETH) to Tornado Cash, a service that obscures transaction trails.
The wallet deposited 25,700 ETH to the cryptocurrency mixer over two hours on Tuesday after two months of inactivity, blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain said in an X post.
The exploiter’s addresses held about 81,454 Ether, worth roughly $194 million, according to Arkham. Crypto mixers pool funds from multiple addresses and obscure fund trails, making tracing harder.
Drift, a Solana-based decentralized exchange, reported about $295 million in losses from the April 1 hack. Drift said in June that a forensic investigation by cybersecurity firm Mandiant attributed the attack to UNC6862, a North Korean threat group.
Drift opened claims and redemptions for DFX recovery tokens on Oct. 1. The tokens give affected users a claim on a recovery pool, which held about $3.1 million at launch and receives exchange revenue and any recovered funds.
Drift exploit ranks as the third-largest crypto hack of 2026, according to DefiLlama. Other notable exploits include the $387 million Bitget hack and the $320 million Liquid Network exploit.
Related: Anthropic warns ‘AI worms’ may autonomously spread across devices like a virus
Subscribe to daily byte-sized crypto news from Cointelegraph
More on the subject
