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Two cryptocurrency exchanges have frozen accounts identified as being used by the notorious North Korean Lazarus Group.
The story began with a cryptocurrency researcher calling himself “ZachXBT,” who said late last week, “before depositing funds from the Harmony Bridge hack via Railgun to three exchanges on January 13-14, 2023. We have discovered an entity called “Lazarus Group” moving 41,000 ETH.
1/2 North Korean Lazarus Group consolidates funds across three different exchanges after a very busy weekend moving $63.5 million (~41,000 ETH) through Railgun from the Harmony bridge hack I made a deposit. pic.twitter.com/huDumaJeSh
—ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 15, 2023
Harmony Bridge is a cryptocurrency transfer service that was attacked in June 2022, resulting in the loss of approximately $100 million in cryptocurrency.
Analysts quickly identified the Lazarus Group as the kind of entity that could be interested in attacking Harmony.
Lazarus Group is a suspected North Korean government-run cybercriminal group, notorious for its WannaCry ransomware, attacking Sony Pictures and stealing secrets from energy companies.
It later moved on to crypto-heist and was accused of stealing $620 million in crypto from game developer Sky Mavis, publisher of a crypto-centric game named Axie Infinity.
North Korea steals cryptocurrencies because sanctions make access to fiat currencies difficult. The country’s brutal regime commits mass human rights violations of its citizens, but it is a way to push rulers out of power by making countries opposed to its violent dictatorship unacceptable to the cost of seeking regime change. We need funds to pursue our conventional missile and nuclear weapons programs to help keep us in place.
However, the US State Department is offering a $10 million bounty for information on North Korea-backed hacks in hopes of more effectively combating North Korea’s cybercrime program.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts lyrically talk about the anonymity that tokens offer, but the reality is that it is possible to track their movements. Trying to leave dead traces.
These attempts were spotted by ZachXBT and by cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which has frozen accounts allegedly involved in the Lazarus Group’s efforts.
We have detected activity in the Harmony One hacker fund. They had previously attempted to launder money through Binance and we have frozen his account. This time I used Fobi. I helped the Huobi team freeze his account. A total of 124 BTC were recovered. CeFi to help sustain DeFi #SAFU!🙏
— CZ🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) January 16, 2023
“Huobi”, mentioned in the above tweet, is another cryptocurrency exchange that has helped Lazarus Group to resurrect the proceeds of the Harmony heist and prevent the North Korean regime from using it.
Accounts frozen by Binance and Huobi have reached 124 BTC and $2.6 million at the time of writing.
This is quite a change to deny the North Korean regime. And perhaps feathers for the cryptocurrency community battling ongoing information security, regulation, fraud, and existential issues. ®
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