The disturbing Tornado Cash crypto mixer hack

Samczsun, security researcher at Paradigm, revealed an alarming attack involving Tornado Cash, the controversial crypto mixer. This service, often associated with money laundering, was hacked yesterday. Let’s look at this incident

An attack that calls into question the reliability of decentralized platforms

Tornado Cash, which has been sanctioned by the US Treasury, is the victim of a hostile takeover. Hackers managed to attack the platform by manipulating the governance mechanism. They took full control of the network after giving themselves a staggering 1.2 million fraudulent votes. The perpetrators of the attack thus compromised the future of the crypto mixer. Samczsun found : “Now that they have all the votes, they can do whatever they want. In this case, they simply removed 10,000 votes as TORN and sold everything“.

The Tornado Cash attack is sure to shake the crypto space significantly. One of the crypto companies that took action in response to the incident is Binance, the leading crypto exchange. Indeed, the platform quickly announced the temporary suspension of deposits of Tornado Cash’s governance token, TORN.

In fact, the operation of the Tornado Cash blockchain protocol is governed by a distributed network of computers. Also, the network’s governance token, TORN, plays a major role in it. It allows holders to participate in the vote when improvements to the protocol are needed.

Now the crypto community and investors are concerned about the consequences of the attack on Tornado Cash. At the same time, players in the new industry are asking questions related to the security and integrity of decentralized systems.

The news comes to further tarnish the reputation of crypto mixer Tornado Cash. The platform has long had a bad reputation due to its troubled past. Indeed, it has always been suspected by the authorities of enabling criminals to launder illicit funds. Dune Analytics noted that since the protocol’s inception in 2019, around $8 billion in transactions have been recorded. This whole situation underscores the need for robust security measures to be in place to protect crypto platforms. In addition, users should look for more comprehensive solutions to secure their cryptocurrencies.