Only three days after the Office of Foreign Assets Control OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash, Elliptic has released a new report on howBlockchain bridges could be a potential future target of US sanctions if the US Treasury Department is serious about money laundering.
The rate of criptocurrency theft has gone up as the prices of cryptocurrencies fall from their all-time high in recent years, and the rates of data breaches have become a daily occurrence. Over the past decade, hackers and scammers stole $12 billion in digital assets, according to a report last year. The rate has accelerated this year.
In the last seven months, hackers have stolen $1.4 billion in digital assets using crypto bridges. According to a report from Elliptic, half of that amount was stolen through RenBridge. The stolen funds were linked to crimes and money laundering, which was the reason why the RenBridge chain was singled out.
The bridges have become a prime target for hackers due to vulnerabilities in their underlying code. In June, hackers stole nearly $100 million worth of virtual currency after Harmony's Horizon bridge was exploited.
In February, we wrote about the Wormhole, a bridge between Solana and other criptocurrencies after hackers exploited the Wormhole network and stole 120,000 ETH around $320 million, making it the second-largest DeFi hack ever. Cross-chain orBlockchain bridges allow you to transfer assets without going through a centralized service, such as an exchange. With the help of a centralized exchange that is largely unprotected, users of cryptocurrencies are able to bypass a centralized exchange that is largely unprotected. As the need to connect disparate platforms grows, bridges have become more popular, and hackers have perfected their craft of exploiting these bridges to steal billions in criptocurrencies.
So far this year, more than 1.3 billion have been stolen from the blockchain bridge hacks, according to Elliptic. Tom Robinson, Elliptic co-founder and chief scientist, said in an interview with CNBC:
The low hanging fruit for cyber criminals is the billions of dollars worth of criptocurrencies locked within them. The level of security has not kept pace with the value of assets that they hold, as these bridges have been breached by hackers in a variety of ways.