Security News > 2021 > November > These are the cryptomixers hackers use to clean their ransoms
Cryptomixers have always been at the epicenter of cybercrime activity, allowing hackers to "Clean" cryptocurrency stolen from victims and making it hard for law enforcement to track them.
Mixers allow threat actors to deposit illicitly obtained cryptocurrency and then mix it in a large pool of "Random" transactions.
For the use of this service, the cryptomixers take a commission from the mixed cryptocurrency.
There's a dedicated area of research around the tracing of illicit cryptocurrency transactions, so mixing services need to use secret and robust mixing algorithms, or law enforcement could trace the funds.
Cryptocurrency mixing isn't intrinsically illegal and is commonly promoted as a privacy-boosting method.
"The developers behind Avaddon, DarkSide 2.0 and REvil likely integrated the BitMix cryptocurrency mixer to facilitate the laundering of ransom payments for program affiliates," reads the report by Intel471.