Cryptohacker ignores reward and moves $744,000 to Tornado Cash

The hacker behind the recent attack on blockchain project Cysic has once again made himself heard. On Friday, nearly $744,000 worth of crypto coins were sent to Tornado Cash, a service that makes cash flows harder to track.

It is striking that Cysic had offered the attacker a reward the day before to get the stolen money back.

According to security firm PeckShield, the attacker sent 300 Ethereum (ETH) and 30.4 BnB to Tornado Cash on Friday. Together, the crypto coins were worth about $744,000.

Tornado Cash mixes transactions from different users, making it much harder to figure out where the money ends up.

The relocation follows an attack on Cysic on Saturday 17 October. The hacker was able to exploit a vulnerability in a bridge that allows crypto coins to be sent between different blockchains.

This allowed the attacker to create 10 million Cysic (Cys) tokens on BnB Smart Chain without permission.

The hacker then sold about 7.2 million of these tokens and converted the proceeds into other crypto coins.

Cysic intervened by shutting down the bridge and blocking the attacker's address. As a result, the remaining 2.8 million Cys tokens were frozen.

According to the Cysic Foundation, the main network remained unaffected. Also, existing crypto coins in users' wallets were not stolen.

On Thursday, Cysic tried to get the stolen money back with a striking proposal. The hacker was allowed to keep ten percent of the proceeds if he returned the remaining ninety percent within 72 hours.

Specifically, Cysic asked to repay 275,872 ETH. In return, the attacker was allowed to keep about 30,652 ETH as a reward.

But instead of returning the money, an address linked to the hacker moved most of the crypto coins to Tornado Cash on Friday.

According to blockchain analysis platform Arkham, only about $45 worth of Ethereum remained at the address after that.

Whether Cysic can still recover the money is unclear. The foundation has announced that it will transfer the case to investigative services if the hacker does not cooperate within the set period.

In the meantime, the investigation into the attack continues. Cysic has not yet announced when the disconnected connection between the blockchains will become available again.