Crooks stole $10 million from Axie Infinity co-founder

Crooks stole nearly $10 million from the wallet of one of the co-founders of the video game Axie Infinity and the related Ronin Network.

Cybercriminals stole about $10 million from the wallet of Jeff “Jihoz” Zirlin, who is one of the co-founders of the video game Axie Infinity and the related Ronin Network.

On February 23, researchers at blockchain cybersecurity firm PeckShield alerted about a “whale wallet” compromise over the Ronin Bridge. The experts reported that the attackers stole about 3,248 ETH (roughly $9.7 million). Cyber thieves transferred the stolen funds to the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer.

“PeckShield’s investigation of the compromised wallets from Ronin Bridge v2 suggests that the 3,248-ETH loot was initially split and moved to three different wallets. The funds eventually made their way into Tornado Cash, a service often used by hackers to anonymize the funds’ ownership and traceability.” reported CoinTelegraph.

#PeckShieldAlert It appears a whale wallet has been compromised, & ~3,248 $ETH (worth ~$9.7m) from the #Ronin Bridge was withdrawn and transferred to #TornadoCash pic.twitter.com/sRK36BQFDu

— PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) February 23, 2024

Zirlin confirmed the theft with a message published on X, he pointed out that the attack is limited to his two personal accounts, and is not linked to the operations of the Ronin chain.

This has been a tough morning for me. 

Two of my addresses have been compromised.

The attack is limited to my personal accounts, and has nothing to do with validation or operations of the Ronin chain.

Additionally, the leaked keys have nothing to do with Sky Mavis operations.…

— Jihoz.ron (@Jihoz_Axie) February 23, 2024

The Record Media highlighted that another Ronin Network co-founder, Aleksander Larsen, confirmed that the cyber heist is not linked to the operations of the Ronin chain.

The bridge has no issue and Ronin is not compromised.

Extremely misleading title.

A wallet has clearly been compromised like what happens on every chain, and the funds are being tornado cashed.

The bridge itself has top security, been through many audits and goes on pause when…

— Psycheout.ron (@Psycheout86) February 23, 2024

In March 2022, in a separate incident, threat actors stole approximately $625 million worth of Ethereum and USDC tokens from Axie Infinity‘s Ronin network bridge.

In April, the U.S. government attributed the recent $600 million Ronin Validator cryptocurrencty heist to the North Korea-linked APT Lazarus.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, ransomware)