The United States Treasury Department has added several cryptocurrency addresses allegedly connected to controversial mixer Tornado Cash to the Specially Designated Nationals list of the Office of Foreign Asset Control, or OFAC. In a Monday announcement, the OFAC effectively barred U.S. residents from using more than 40 USD Coin (USDC) and Ether (ETH) addresses connected to Tornado Cash by placing them on its list of Specially Designated Nationals. It’s unclear what led to this enforcement action, but the protocol was at the center of some recent hacks and exploits in decentralized finance, including a $375-million attack on Wormhole in February …

South Korean justice minister Han Dong-hoon was in New York recently to discuss various ways in which the two nations can corporate on investigations associated with financial crimes, especially crypto-related crimes. Hoon met with Securities and Commodities Task Force co-chief Andrea M. Griswold at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York along with Scott Hartman, chief of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force of the same office on Tuesday, reported a local news publication. The two sides discussed ways to exchange information and strengthen cooperation to ensure timely action on the increasing number of …

A new strain of crypto-malware is being spread via YouTube, tricking users to download software that’s designed to steal data from 30 crypto wallets and crypto-browser extensions. Cyber intelligence company Cyble in a June 30 blog post said it had been tracking the malware known as PennyWise — likely named after the monster in Stephen King’s horror novel It — since it was first identified in May. “Our investigation indicates that the stealer is an emerging threat,” wrote Cyble in a blog post on June 30: “In its current iteration, this stealer can target over 30 browsers and cryptocurrency applications …

The funds from Harmony’s Horizon Bridge have begun to move into the Tornado Cash Ethererum mixer, signaling that the attacker has no intention of accepting the $1 million bounty offered. The decision to obfuscate the ill-gotten gains answers questions about whether the Harmony team’s offer of just 1% of the $100 million in crypto funds stolen on Friday would be enough to convince the exploiter to return them. #PeckShieldAlert ~6k $ETH (~$7.1m) into @TornadoCash from @harmonyprotocol exploiters Intermediary address: 0x432...47ae pic.twitter.com/AR9dmJRQet — PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) June 27, 2022 A total of 18,036.3 Ether (ETH), worth about $21 million, was moved out …

The collection and processing of information was a major theme at the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (HSGAC) hearing titled, “Rising Threats: Ransomware Attacks and Ransom Payments Enabled by Cryptocurrency” on Tuesday. The committee hosted a panel of private-sector experts who discussed the problem of ransomware attacks and the challenges of collecting and using the information necessary to fight them. Committee chair Gary Peters of Michigan, who introduced the Strengthening American Cybersecurity Act in February, said the government lacks sufficient data even to understand the scope of the threat posed by ransomware attacks. Attackers almost …

Monero (XMR) has shown a surprising resilience against the United States Federal Reserve’s hawkish policies that pushed the prices of most of its crypto rivals — including the top dog Bitcoin (BTC) — lower last week. XMR price closed the previous week 2.37% higher at $217, data from Binance shows. In comparison, BTC, which typically influences the broader crypto market, finished the week down 11.55%. The second-largest crypto, Ether (ETH), also plunged 11% in the same period. While the crypto market wiped off $163.25 billion from its valuation last week, down nearly 9%, Monero’s market cap increased by $87.7 million, …

The United States Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced Friday that it was sanctioning cryptocurrency mixer Blender.io for its role in laundering proceeds from the hacking of Axie Infinity's Ronin Bridge. North Korean state-sponsored hackers Lazarus Group have been identified as the perpetrators of the attack. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said in a statement: “Today, for the first time ever, Treasury is sanctioning a virtual currency mixer. […] We are taking action against illicit financial activity by the DPRK and will not allow state-sponsored thievery and its money-laundering enablers to …

Governments around the globe have also become more aware of the crypto market and the various ways in which it can be regulated. Despite a growing adoption rate and involvement of mainstream financial giants, however, naysayers continue to portray crypto as a tool for miscreants and criminals. Several crypto platforms and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols have been compromised over the years, owing to various code vulnerabilities or centralization problems. However, stealing of money is the easiest part, while moving that money and cashing it out is nearly impossible. This is primarily because most crypto transactions are recorded on a public …

Australian financial compliance enforcement agency AUSTRAC has released two new guides to help entities spot when customers are using crypto for illicit means or when they are being forced to pay the creators of ransomware. But, it warned that debanking customers merely on suspicion of such activity was a harmful practice with serious negative effects. In an announcement posted earlier today, AUSTRAC noted that the growing acceptance, value and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology has been accompanied by an increase in cybercrime. “Cyber-enabled crime is an increasing threat to Australians. According to the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC), 500 …

A top official from the United States Secret Service (USSS) says the agency can track the flow of Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies in a similar manner to email addresses, and it has seized more than $102 million in crypto across 254 cases since 2015. USSS assistant director of investigations David Smith told CNBC that the transparent and immutable aspect of blockchain ledgers means investigators can trace transactions easier than fiat in some cases. “One of the guiding principles of the blockchain is that it is a public ledger that’s shared and everyone with a little bit of computing power …

The United States Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list was updated Thursday to reflect the possibility that North Korean cyber-criminal Lazarus Group was behind last month's hack of the Ronin Bridge, in which over 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) was taken, Chainalysis announced by Twitter. The information was also confirmed by Ronin. The hack, which took place on March 23, was worth over $600 million at the time. Discovered several days after the fact, it is one of the biggest robberies of its kind in history. The …

A former blackhat hacker who goes by the name Gummo online claims to have amassed around $7 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC). Despite a flood of positive comments and posts relating to his interviews with the Soft White Underbelly YouTube channel — which has 3.18 million subscribers — information about Gummo is scarce elsewhere, which could either be by design or suggest that a large pinch of salt may be required when listening to his extravagant claims. He said that he has been working in the field for more than 30 years, and while he started hacking for illicit reasons …