Reported by The Guardian
US blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis has spotted that the hackers behind the Binance theft are using “ never-seen-before” patterns to launder the stolen assets and stay ahead of the authorities.
They report that thousands of transactions have taken place in a short period, suggesting the attackers are using automation to obscure the trail of funds.
Rather than simply moving funds onward, they repeatedly circulate them among addresses, often sending funds back to addresses involved earlier in the sequence.
More from the original report
double quotation mark While billions of dollars in crypto under their control were denominated in unfreezable cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, billions more were held in stablecoins like USDT and USDC that can be frozen. It was only a matter of time before the issuers of those stablecoins would freeze those funds — in coordination with law enforcement and industry partners such as Chainalysis.
Freezing funds takes time. The attacker attempted to stay ahead of that process by quickly moving $500 million of stablecoins into a wallet whose job it was to swap out those freezable assets to non-freezable assets. Over nearly 20 minutes it swapped $325 million in stablecoins into $285 million in ETH. Ten minutes later, the exploiter sent the remaining $175 million in stablecoins to stopover wallets, likely trying to move faster than a blacklist or freeze. But the industry caught up with them more quickly than they expected: by 5:14 pm eastern the freezes started.