By Nathan Ferguson
The current year has seen several hacks on cross-chain bridges, however, the latest data taken from Elliptic (a blockchain analytics company) accuses that one platform has been utilized for laundering more than 0.50B dollars worth in illegally attained crypto assets.
A report was published on 10th August stating that RenBridge has been assistive in laundering a minimum amount of approximately $540M through the criminal proceeds since 2020 via a procedure called chain hopping, transferring 1 crypto type into some other one as well as shifting it between several blockchains. As disclosed by Elliptic, the cross-chain bridges that are decentralized offer an unregulated substitutive to exchanges to transact worth between blockchains.
Hacker Groups Rise Steeply
Most of the time, the blockchain bridges or cross-chain bridges are utilized to serve the permitted operations, allowing consumers to shift crypto effortlessly throughout the blockchain networks. The customers usually take the tokens from a chain and deposit them to a bridge protocol protected by a contract. After that, the consumer is provided with a token that is alike the parallel token present within some other chain.
Nonetheless, Elliptic mentioned that the respective bridges have additionally been utilized on the behalf of the ransomware gangs, hackers, and exploiters to exploit the criminal proceeds, while RenBridge accounts for almost $540M out of the exploited proceeds over a previous couple of years. In recent times, up to $2.4M worth of cryptocurrencies has been taken away within the Nomad attack that occurred on 2nd August over the cross-chain bridge, as pointed out by the company.
Authorities Become more Apprehensive
A ransomware group named Conti, which famously exploited the government of Costa Rica in recent June, has even exploited more than $53M via RenBridge up till now. In the words of Elliptic, the blockchain bridges like RonBridge presents a challenge in front of the authorities who are attempting to crack down on the entities and persons utilizing the evolving technology to carry out illegal operations.
In a status report of 30th June, an intergovernmental agency named the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) brought to the front the elevating hazards linked to chain hopping, especially within the world of decentralized finance (DeFi). It was of the view that the evolution and advancement within the DeFi space are the possible reasons for originating apprehensions of the risks as well as their proliferation.