Crypto hackers hide stolen funds faster – research

Just eight months in, this year’s total losses from crypto hacks have already surpassed those of 2024. A new research report has found that attackers are moving faster than ever to hide stolen funds.

Global Ledger (GL), a blockchain-focused provider of anti-money laundering solutions, said that attackers often manage to launder the funds even before the incident is publicly known.

“The fastest attacker fund movement in H1’25 was just 4 seconds,” the company said, emphasizing that speed has become a dangerous new weapon, as the window for blocking or tracing stolen assets is narrowing.

For example, GL found that in one case, it took only 2 minutes and 57 seconds for criminals to fully launder the stolen funds. In almost a third of cases, stolen money was laundered within a day.

“With only 4.6% of stolen assets recovered in H1 2025, most funds disappear before any action can be taken,” the researchers said.

Moreover, they stressed that while 84% of the analyzed incidents were reported on the same day they happened, teams need to be faster. One reason is that the longer the time between the theft and public disclosure, the more difficult it is for anti-money laundering (AML) systems to catch the movement of illicit funds.

The research found that the fastest incident-to-report time via an alerting system was 5 minutes, but even that might not be enough.

“If you’re a [virtual asset service provider], and funds from a hacker-controlled address have already reached your platform, you typically have a 10-15-minute window to act,” GL concluded.

As reported by Cybernews.com, crypto exchanges and stablecoins have already been criticized for reacting too slowly, as “a significant lag” between the initiation of a freeze and its actual enforcement has already allowed the transfer of more than $78 million worth of illicit funds.