Axie Infinity Founder’s Wallet Hacked for $9.6M in ETH

Two Ronin Network wallets belonging to Jeffrey Zirlin, the co-founder of the Axie Infinity game, have been compromised with hackers siphoning off 3,249 ether (ETH), valued at around $9.6 million. 

The attack occurred during the early hours of Friday, February 23, Asia time.

Axie Infinity Founder Suffers $9.6M Hack

According to Lookonchain monitoring, the hackers initially stole crypto assets, including 3.2 million RON ($9.53 million), 282.32 WETH ($834,000),160,000 PIXEL ($87,000), 2.76 million SLP ($10,000), 2,042 USDC, and 164 AXS ($1,272) from the victim’s wallet.

A hacker attacked 2 wallets of @Jihoz_Axie and stole $10.46M assets, including:

3.2M $RON($9.53M)
282.32 $WETH($834K)
160K $PIXEL($87K)
2.76M $SLP($10K)
2,042 $USDC
164 $AXS($1,272)

All assets were exchanged for 3,249 $ETH($9.6M) and deposited into #TornadoCash. pic.twitter.com/BUe8V3q3er

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) February 23, 2024

After that, the hackers subsequently exchanged the stolen assets for 3,249 ETH ($9.6 million) and deposited them into Tornado Cash, making it challenging to trace fund flows.

A few minutes into the hack, Zirlin confirmed on X (Twitter) that his wallet address had indeed been compromised.

He, however, stated that the attack was limited to his personal wallet and had nothing to do with the validation or operations of the Ronin chain. He also mentioned that the incident has nothing to do with Sky Mavis (the developer of Axie Infinity and Ronin Network) operations. 

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

Reiterating Zirlin’s comments, Aleksander Larsen, another co-founder of Axie Infinity, stated that only a wallet is being compromised and that the Ronin bridge has no issue, “like what happens on every chain.”

A Private Key Leak?

While a detailed analysis of the root cause of the hack is not provided, the X post from Zirlin himself suggests that the private keys of his wallets were leaked, thus leading to unauthorized access by the hackers.

In March 2022, the Ronin Network lost $625 million worth of Ether (ETH) and USD Coin (USDC) to hackers in what has been estimated to be the biggest hack in the history of crypto. The US government later linked the hack to the infamous state-backed cyber threat group, Lazarus Group.