The U.S. Treasury has declared that the crypto mixing service, Blender has dangerous connections to hackers in the region of North Korea and has been utilized for other criminal activities.
Blender in Big Trouble
According to the Office of Foreign Assets Control in the United States Treasury, cryptocurrency mixing service, Blender is supposedly involved in a deal with hackers from North Korea. Additionally, the office has also declared that the Blender mixing service was also utilized in illegal money laundering activities associated with the funds that were looted from Axie Infinity.
The incident with Axie Infinity is still said to be the one of the most dangerous attacks in the history of crypto, leading up to a loss of more than a staggering $600Million, as hackers distributed the stolen funds to several cryptocurrency exchanges and mixers like Blender. Since then, Axie Infinity has been trying to recover the funds and have also been hosting fundraisers to accommodate the ones affected.
Taking a deeper dive into the matter of fund laundering, the office of foreign has professed that the Blender service has been utilized by specific Russian ransomware groups that include, Trickbot, Contl, Ryuk and a couple others. In addition to that the office also states the service was associated with the well-known Ronin attack that happened back in March and was used to secure more than $20Million of illegally acquired funds.
Strict Action from Authorities.
The Under Secretary of the Treasury of Terrorism and Financial intelligence, Brain E. Nelson stated that crypto mixing services that are associated with criminal activities are a straight threat towards the national security interests of the United States and must be dealt with. Furthermore, Brain E. Nelson said that they are working towards imposing strict sanctions towards these types of services and will not let any of the illegal activities from these dangerous criminals go unpunished.
As of now, severe sanctions have been allegedly placed against the crypto mixer Blender, considering the U.S. Treasury’s affirmations. The office of foreign assets control will also be updating the database of specially assigned Nationals and blocked individuals (SDN List) that possess crypto addresses that relate to the Lazarus group that is a mysterious cybercrime organization which is associated with North Korea and has sanctions already imposed on it since the past few years of time.
James Thompson