Crypto laundering increasingly performed through cloud mining

Cloud mining services have been increasingly exploited to facilitate cryptocurrency laundering, with such a technique already being leveraged by ransomware operations and cryptocurrency scammers after being initially observed in nation-state actors, reports The Hacker News. Chainalysis researchers discovered that ransomware actors have sent $19.1 million from four wallet addresses and $14.1 million from three mining pools to an active crypto exchange deposit address, with intermediary wallets and pools sent to deliver most of the proceeds. "In this scenario, the mining pool acts similarly to a mixer in that it obfuscates the origin of funds and creates the illusion that the funds are proceeds from mining rather than from ransomware," said Chainalysis. The findings also showed the significant use of mining pools in crypto scammers' money laundering process. "Deposit addresses [with receipts of at least $1 million worth of crypto from mining pools] have received just under $1.1 billion worth of cryptocurrency from scam-related addresses since 2018," Chainalysis said.