North Korean hacking group Lazarus is moving its loot from the Harmony Bridge hack this weekend. This is what “ZachXBT,” a well-known investigator of crimes committed through cryptocurrencies, claims.
according to tweet Posted by the researcher on Monday (16th), the group has run out of large amounts of ether (ETH). Specifically, the hackers transferred 41,000 ETH, which is equivalent to 323 million Brazilian reals at the current exchange rate.
The investigator claimed that the transactions came from a Tornado Cash mixer and then passed through Railgun, a smart contract privacy platform. This platform uses a zero-knowledge proof system to obfuscate transactions.
Ultimately, the hackers sent the amount to three different exchanges, including Binance and allegedly Huobi. Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao confirmed the move and said the exchange had blocked the funds.
The group is linked to the attack on Harmony
The Lazarus Group has become quite adept at moving illegally obtained cryptocurrency in order to evade the authorities. At the end of last year, as reported by CriptoFácil, the group was accused of participating in the attack on the Harmony Bridge.
On June 24, the bridge lost about R$500 million in a hacker attack whose modus operandi was similar to that used by Lazarus. That is, the current movement corresponds to 60% of the stolen funds and also follows the model used by the group.
It is estimated that Lazarus has stolen about $2 billion since its inception. In 2022, the group has shifted its focus to decentralized finance (DeFi) and bridges. In addition to Harmony, the group is suspected of carrying out the attack on Ronin, which caused losses of more than R$3 billion.
CZ blocks intruders
On Monday (16th), the CEO of Binance confirmed that hackers attempted to use the exchange to transfer funds. However, CZ claimed that the exchange froze the funds. Then the hackers tried to use Huobi for the same purpose.
Through a partnership, Binance Huobi helped block hacker funds. According to CZ, the two exchanges together withheld 124 Bitcoins (BTC), which is about R$13 million.
“We helped the Huobi team get their accounts frozen. Together, 124 BTC were recovered. CeFi helps sustain DeFi #SAFU,” CZ said.
Despite this, the cryptocurrency market held on to the gains made over the weekend. They rose further during the Asian trading session on Monday morning, with a gain of 1.7%. Over the past seven days, the bitcoin price has increased by around 22%.
As a result, BTC has recovered most of the losses it has incurred since the November crash of FTX.