The notorious North Korean hacking group Lazarus began laundering funds stolen from Harmony over the weekend to the tune of $64 million in ETH. Binance tried to recover some of the stolen funds.
Lazarus Group Moves $64M from Harmony Hack
In June 2022, the Lazarus Group exploited Horizon Bridge, a cross-chain interoperability protocol. They siphoned as much as $100 million from the DeFi protocol. Over the weekend, the infamous hackers began moving the loot.
The pseudonymous blockchain sleuth ZachXBT reported that over the weekend, the group moved “$63.5 million (~41,000 ETH) from the Harmony Bridge hack,” identifying over 350 addresses linked to the attackers.
According to ZachXBT, the funds were moved through Railgun before being deposited on three different exchanges. Railgun is not a coin mixer (like Tornado Cash) but makes transactions fully invisible through zk-SNARKs cryptography.
Binance Freezes 125 BTC from the Loot
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of Binance, also announced today that the exchange detected fund movement from the Harmony hacker. He adds that Binance proceeded to freeze his accounts.
According to CZ, the same activity was also identified on the crypto exchange Huobi. Binance assisted the Huobi team in freezing the accounts. Both crypto exchanges have recovered 124 BTC, worth approximately $2.59 million.
On the Flipside
- Lazarus Group isn’t letting up on its nefarious activities, recently impersonating venture capitalists to invest in crypto startups for phishing schemes.
Why You Should Care
As the Lazarus Group becomes more adept at stealing and moving illicit crypto, projects must do more to protect users from their activities.
Read about the recent campaigns by Lazarus in:
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Alerts Cryptocurrency Funds of Attacks Perpetrated by the Lazarus Group
North Korean Hackers Target (NYSE:TGT) NFT Holders in Phishing Attacks, Steal Ether and Over 1,000 NFTs