The office of foreign assets control (OFAC) of the U.S. Treasury Department said: due to the transaction support involved in the cyber attack against ronin network in March, the agency will punish blender, a "unjust enrichment" service provider Impose sanctions** It is reported that the ronin is mainly responsible for connecting the axie infinity online game to the Ethereum blockchain, but the hacker organization Lazarus group caused a loss of more than US $620 million.
It is rumored that Lazarus group has North Korean background, while blender The IO platform is said to have gained more than $20.5 million in illegal gains in this round of attacks.
Brian E. Nelson, under secretary of the Treasury for financial intelligence and combating terrorism, said:
The platform to assist in illegal virtual currency trading poses a threat to the national security interests of the United States. We are taking action against the illegal financial activities of the DPRK and will not allow such asset theft and fuelling the crime of money laundering.
It is reported that blender IO mainly provides English Russian bilingual services. Researchers call it one of the cryptocurrency money laundering services most favored by cyber criminal gangs.
At 10 a.m. Eastern time, the website is offline. However, as of Friday morning, the operator had not responded to any information related to the US Treasury sanctions on its website or telegraph channel.
The record, a foreign media, tried to send an interview email, but by the time of publication, it had not received a reply from the other party. As for blender Bitcointalk for IO information discussion Org forum, its latest article was the temporary suspension announcement on April 5.