North Korean hackers who orchestrated a billion-pound cryptocurrency heist have successfully cashed out over £232,000,000 of their loot.
The hackers, generally known as the Lazarus Group, pulled off the most important heist in history during a raid on crypto exchange ByBit two weeks ago, which saw them plunder £1.1 billion’s value of digital currency Ethereum, the second most dear cryptocurrency after Bitcoin.
Since then, law enforcement agencies have been engaged in an intense cat-and-mouse game with the hackers as they seek to reclaim the stolen cryptocurrency before it’s converted into untraceable currency.
‘Every minute matters for the hackers who are attempting to confuse the cash trail and so they are extremely sophisticated in what they’re doing,’ said Dr Tom Robinson, co-founder of crypto investigators Elliptic.
North Korea has a popularity of being amongst one of the best crypto launderers on the planet, he added, and said the chances of tracking down the stolen assets was incredibly slim.
‘I imagine they’ve a whole room of individuals doing this using automated tools and years of experience,’ he told the BBC. ‘We may see from their activity that they only take a number of hours break every day, possibly working in shifts to get the crypto was money.’
It is assumed around 20% of the stolen crypto has already ‘gone dark’, meaning it’s unlikely to ever be recovered.
ByBit CEO Ben Zhou has assured customers the remaining of their funds are protected, and the corporate has replenished the stolen funds with loans from investors.
The corporate has since ‘declared war’ on Lazarus and announced a bounty programme to encourage people to trace down and report the stolen crypto.
All crypto transactions are displayed publicly on a blockchain, which implies it’s technically possible to trace the cash because it is moved around by the Lazarus Group.
If the hackers attempt to convert the crypto into money using conventional means, the stolen coins could be frozen and returned to their owner.
But resulting from North Korea’s closed economy, by which the overwhelming majority of money is funneled into the federal government, tracking down the transactions might be harder.
Thus far the initiative has paid out £4,000,000 in rewards to twenty individuals, although authorities are pessimistic about recovering nearly all of the loot.
The Lazarus Group has been linked to a series of high-profile crypto heists in recent times, including:
- A $41m hack on UpBit in 2019
- A $275m attack on KuCoin in 2020 (with most funds recovered)
- The $600m Ronin Bridge hack in 2022
- A $100m theft from Atomic Wallet in 2023
Despite mounting evidence suggesting otherwise, Pyongyang has consistently denied any association with the Lazarus Group.
In 2020, the US added North Koreans accused of being a part of the group to its Cyber Most Wanted list.
But the possibilities of the individuals ever being arrested are extremely slim unless they leave their country.
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