Drift Hacker Moves $61M in ETH to Tornado Cash Amid Recovery Efforts
A cryptocurrency wallet linked to the Drift Protocol exploit transferred approximately $61 million in Ether (ETH) to Tornado Cash, a platform that conceals transaction origins.
Over a two-hour stretch on Tuesday, after being inactive for two months, the wallet deposited 25,700 ETH into the crypto mixer, according to blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain's update on X.
The hacker-controlled addresses held roughly 81,454 ETH, valued at about $194 million, per data from Arkham. Crypto mixers combine assets from various sources and obscure transaction paths, making the flow of funds difficult to trace.
Drift, a decentralized exchange operating on Solana, announced a loss of around $295 million due to a hack on April 1. In June, they revealed that cybersecurity company Mandiant's investigation linked the breach to UNC6862, a threat actor group from North Korea.
On October 1, Drift initiated claims and redemptions for DFX recovery tokens, which grant affected users the right to claims from a recovery pool. At launch, this pool contained roughly $3.1 million and is funded by exchange revenue and any recovered assets.
According to DefiLlama, the Drift hack is the third largest crypto breach of 2026, following other major incidents like the $387 million Bitget hack and the $320 million Liquid Network breach.
Crypto mixers like Tornado Cash are critical tools in laundering funds after hacks, complicating efforts to track and recover stolen assets.
Why it matters
The movement of stolen ETH to mixers underscores the challenges blockchain platforms face in tracking illicit funds and highlights the growing need for effective recovery and security measures in DeFi.
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