US Treasury Blacklists Tornado Cash Mixer

One of the most popular mixers, ETH Tornado Cash, has been sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury as hackers continue to use the platform.

The U.S. Department of the Economy and Treasury, at the request of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), imposed sanctions against the popular ETH mixing service Tornado Cash. The platform address and many Ethereum addresses have been blacklisted and now Americans will not be able to use the mixer or make transactions with sanctioned addresses.

The announcement from the ministry lists several Ethereum addresses associated with the Tornado Cash community, including those where people could donate funds to the platform. According to Nansen researcher Andrew Thurman (Andrew Thurman), the list of banned addresses also included an address owned by the Gitcoin open source funding platform.

The Treasury Department said it took these measures because criminals used Tornado Cash to launder money. The state body also added that the well-known North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group used Tornado Cash to launder more than $96 million after the Harmony Bridge hack in June, when hackers stole about $100 million.

Tornado Cash said back in April that it was using Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis tool, to prevent the anonymization of addresses on the sanctions list. However, Deputy Treasury Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said that Tornado Cash repeatedly ignored effective controls designed to prevent cybercriminals from laundering funds.

Recall that the first cryptocurrency mixer included in the US sanctions list was Blender. In May, OFAC blocked the site because it was also used by North Korean hackers.