On January 15, 2023, investigators for the network discovered that funds stolen during the Harmony Bridge attack had been moved. The alleged thieves, who are allegedly associated with the North Korean hacker syndicate Lazarus Group, moved 41,000 ethereum, worth $63.2 million at current exchange rates.
Onchain researchers track stolen Ethereum from Harmony bridge attack and help major exchanges freeze funds
On June 23 of last year, the Harmony development team revealed that $100 million in cryptocurrency funds had been stolen from the Horizon bridge. Reports indicated that the attacker had used a multi-signature wallet to gain control of the bridge. Chain Investigator Zachxbt discovered that the funds related to the loss of the Horizon bridge began to move 206 days later, with 41,000 ETH (worth $63.2 million at current exchange rates) that are transferred.
“Lazarus Group of North Korea had a very busy weekend moving $63.5 million (approximately 41,000 ETH) of the Harmony Bridge hack via Railgun before consolidating funds and depositing them on three different exchanges,” Zachxbt tweeted. The funds were reportedly deposited with OKEx, Huobi, and Binance. Zachxbt added that Huobi and Binance had frozen some of the ethereum sent to exchanges.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as “CZ”, confirmed that the funds were indeed frozen. “We detected movement of funds from Harmony One hackers”, CZ wrote. “They previously tried to launder through Binance and we froze their accounts. This time they used Huobi. We helped the Huobi team to freeze their accounts. together, 124 BTC have been recovered,” added the Binance executive.
Blockchain intelligence firm Elliptic initially linked funds to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. Lazarus Group is accused of carrying out numerous attacks against cryptocurrency projects in recent years. The North Korean hacking collective is also believed to have been behind the $620 million Ronin Bridge attack.
What do you think about hackers moving 41,000 ethereum on-chain to three major exchanges? Share your perspective in the comments section below.
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