Elliptic: Binance hackers used custom-made meme coins to transfer stolen funds

on November 9, Elliptic disclosed that North Korea-linked Binance hackers used custom tokens and decentralized exchange liquidity pools to transfer stolen funds, with approximately 117,000 NEAR tokens cycled through six homemade meme coins, valued at around $430,000.

Elliitc stated that money launderers paired new tokens with assets such as NEAR to establish liquidity pools, followed by one set of wallets using illicit funds to purchase the tokens, while another set sold the tokens back into the pool and withdrew the assets to avoid direct transfers between the buying and receiving wallets.

The firm discovered this technique on Tron and NEAR, and identified similar operations on Solana, although the latter relied on pre-existing low-liquidity tokens. Elliptic noted that the related transactions remain trackable through on-chain records.