A UN report claims that in March 2024, North Korean hackers used Tornado Cash to launder $150 million in cryptocurrency assets that had been stolen.

In March, organizations speaking for the North Korean government laundered around $150 million in bitcoin assets that had been pilfered using the anonymity protocol Tornado Cash.

A dormant bag of stolen cryptocurrency assets was transported by notorious cyberattackers known as the Lazarus Group back to their headquarters in North Korea, according to a leaked classified United Nations (UN) report that Reuters was able to see.

The illicit theft of $147.5 million worth of cryptocurrency from HTX, a cryptocurrency exchange controlled by Justin Sun, the inventor of Tron, occurred in March 2023 by North Korean hackers. A year later, Tornado Cash was used to funnel the money into North Korea.

For hackers and con artists, cryptocurrency mixing services like Tornado Cash are useful resources. These are used by crooked actors to anonymize and render untraceable cryptocurrency assets.

The UN is reportedly looking into 97 North Korean cyberattacks that stole over $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency between 2017 and 2024, according to a report by Reuters.

UN monitors looked at "11 cryptocurrency thefts... valued at $54.7 million” in 2024 alone, with the accusation that these thefts were connected to "the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) IT workers inadvertently hired by small crypto-related companies.”

Tornado Cash was sanctioned by the US in 2022 for allegedly assisting North Korea in avoiding restrictions on cross-border remittances. But for more almost two years, the protocol and its creators denied the accusations.

The creation of the cryptocurrency mixing protocol Tornado Cash, developed by Alexey Pertsev, was found guilty of money laundering on May 14. This might have serious ramifications for anyone who write open-source technology.

Because Pertsev was accused of using the platform to launder $1.2 billion worth of criminal assets, he received a five years and four month jail sentence. His attorneys have fourteen days to file an appeal of the court decision.