One of the co-founders of Axie Infinity and Ronin Network, Jeff “Jihoz” Zirlin, had two of his crypto wallet addresses hacked, resulting in the theft of approximately $9.7 million worth of Ether (ETH). The stolen funds were transferred through Tornado Cash. On February 23, blockchain investigator PeckShield reported a compromise of a “whale wallet” through the Ronin Bridge, revealing that the hacker had managed to steal 3,248 ETH. Ronin Network co-founder Aleksander Larsen denied any security breach on the Ronin Bridge and suspected that the hack occurred through a compromised wallet. Larsen emphasized that the Ronin Bridge had undergone an audit and would pause in the event of an unusually large withdrawal. Zirlin confirmed the hacking of his personal wallets and stated that the attack was not a result of vulnerabilities in the Ronin chain or Sky Mavis operations. PeckShield explained that the hack was due to a compromised wallet, enabling unauthorized outbound transfers. The details surrounding the hack were not disclosed, but Zirlin’s statement indicated that the private keys of the two wallets were leaked, granting unauthorized access to his personal crypto wallets. PeckShield’s investigation of the compromised wallets from Ronin Bridge v2 revealed that the stolen 3,248 ETH was initially split and transferred to three different wallets, eventually finding its way to Tornado Cash, a service commonly used by hackers to anonymize funds and make them untraceable. In a separate incident, on February 1, Binance froze $4.2 million worth of stolen XRP from the personal wallet of Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen, who fell victim to a $112 million hack on January 31. Unlike the hacker of Axie Infinity’s Jihoz, Larsen’s hacker did not utilize crypto mixer services or decentralized exchanges to conceal their identity. As a result, Binance was able to track down some of the funds and prevent the hacker from accessing them.
Co-founder of Axie Infinity suffers $9.7M loss in hack targeting 3,248-ETH wallet