Crypto30 September, 20262 min read
Bitget Hackers Move $3.9 Million in Zcash Into Ironwood Private Pool
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Wallets linked to Bitget hack moved about $3.9 million in ZEC to Ironwood. The transfers accounted for roughly 15% of the total Bitget stolen funds.
6 outlets told this the same way.
Zcash funds enter Ironwood
Bitget hackers moved about $3.9 million in zcash into the cryptocurrency’s private payment system on Wednesday, making the stolen funds harder to follow as the exchange tries to recover them. CoinDesk added that investigators can see the amount crossing into Ironwood, but transfers inside the shielded pool hide the sender, recipient and amount. CoinDesk said the three deposits represent about 15% of the stolen ZEC, even as investigators can compare entry and exit points using timing, amounts and other metadata.
ZachXBT flagged the movement earlier Wednesday, and CoinDesk said the money came through two intermediary addresses funded by a wallet that Bitget identified as belonging to the attacker. CoinDesk added that investigators can see the amount crossing into Ironwood, but transfers inside the shielded pool hide the sender, recipient and amount. CoinDesk said the three deposits represent about 15% of the stolen ZEC, even as investigators can compare entry and exit points using timing, amounts and other metadata.
Tracking grows harder
Bloomingbit said a wallet tied to the Bitget hack moved about $4 million worth of Zcash into a privacy pool, making the stolen assets even harder to trace. Bloomingbit reported that CoinDesk found the wallet deposited 2,746 Zcash into Ironwood in three transactions, worth $3.9 million at the time. Bloomingbit said the hacker obtained about 18,917 Zcash through the recent Bitget hack, and it described the latest transfer as accounting for about 15% of the total stolen amount.
Bloomingbit said Zcash supports both transparent and private transactions, and it stated that transactions conducted through a privacy pool do not disclose the sender, recipient or transfer amount. Bloomingbit also said CoinDesk recently reported that a wallet linked to the hacker swapped $6.3 million worth of Ether for Bitcoin through THORChain, with tracking becoming increasingly difficult as Bitget seeks to recover the stolen assets.
Recovery and remaining ZEC
Attackers linked to North Korea were reportedly using Zcash’s Ironwood shielded pool to launder a portion of the approximately $387.5 million they siphoned from the Seychelles-based exchange on September 24. Bitget’s security team first flagged the unauthorized activity at around 18:31 UTC, and the initial damage estimate came in at $351.6 million before a subsequent review bumped it to $387.5 million. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen attributed the attack to actors associated with the DPRK, citing behavioral patterns and IP addresses consistent with previous North Korea-linked hacks.
Bitget suspended withdrawals shortly after detecting the breach but began phasing them back in during late September, and the exchange pointed to its User Protection Fund, which held over $464 million at the time of the incident. the roughly $24 million in ZEC still sitting in transparent addresses represents a race against time, because recovery becomes extraordinarily difficult if attackers manage to funnel the remainder into shielded pools before exchanges and law enforcement can freeze or blacklist those coins.