Despite US sanctions against Tornado Cash, the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group has resumed operations laundering funds obtained from cryptocurrencies. This move comes after a resurgence in activities aimed at laundering funds stolen through hacking.
Lazarus Group, known for its cyber attacks, is once again utilizing the Tornado Cash service to launder funds obtained from illegal activities, despite the shadow of American sanctions hanging over this cryptocurrency mixer.
Analytical firm Elliptic identified transactions in which $12 million has been transferred to Tornado Cash addresses since March 13. These funds originated from the HTX cryptocurrency exchange and its cross-chain bridge, HTX Eco Chain (HECO), which were compromised in November.
During the November 22 attack, $30 million was stolen from HTX exchange hot wallets, and $86.6 million was taken from the HECO Chain. These funds were subsequently moved to Ethereum and remained untouched until this week.

Tornado Cash, a decentralized privacy service on the Ethereum blockchain, allows users to deposit and withdraw ETH and ERC-20 tokens anonymously. This protocol faced sanctions from the US Department of the Treasury in August 2022 for its alleged role in laundering over $1 billion from illegal sources, including funds associated with the Lazarus Group.
Despite sanctions, Tornado Cash continues its operations because it is based on smart contracts and operates on decentralized blockchains, making it difficult to shut down.
After losing access to other mixers due to sanctions, it appears that Lazarus Group has returned to using Tornado Cash. Elliptic notes that hackers previously utilized cross-chain bridges and the bitcoin mixer Sindbad for laundering stolen funds, but Sindbad was seized by Finnish authorities following US sanctions.
US authorities are targeting not only mixer platforms but also their developers. Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev from Tornado Cash have been charged with a series of crimes, including money laundering and sanctions violations. In a similar case, the founder of Bitcoin Fog was convicted of money laundering.
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