The Lazarus Group is moving loot from hacking the Harmony Bridge this weekend.
On January 16th, blockchain research firm ZachXBT released details of a massive Ethereum movement. The cryptocurrency originated from the anonymization service Tornado Cash and passed through Railgun.
Railgun is a smart contract privacy platform that obfuscates transactions using zero-knowledge proofs.
About 41,000 ETH, worth about $63.5 million, were sent through Railgun and then deposited on three different exchanges, according to analysts who tracked movements from over 350 addresses.
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
Lazarus Leading to Harmony Attack
The exchanges used were not specified, but analysts said they are usually taken down very quickly.
Lazarus is very good at moving illegal cryptos and preventing authorities from tracking them. This hacker group was associated with the Harmony Bridge attack in June 2022.Blockchain analytics provider Elliptic provides detailed report About the attack at the time.
Harmony Bridge was reportedly hacked for around $100 million on June 24th. crypto potatoElliptic said it used “Tornado demixing capabilities” to track stolen funds from Tornado to other wallets.
Lazarus Group has been involved in several large-scale cryptocurrency heists totaling over $2 billion. In 2022, it was also believed to be behind the $600 million Ronin Bridge attack, with a focus on DeFi and cross-chain bridges.
In October, a North Korean hacker group targeted a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange with a phishing attack.
Crypto market outlook
The cryptocurrency market continues its recent rally over the weekend. They rose further during Monday morning’s Asian trading session, with total market capitalization he up 1.7%. According to CoinGecko, the figure is now above his $1 trillion high in 10 weeks.
Bitcoin gained another 1.8% on the day, reaching $21,155 at the time of writing. Ethereum, meanwhile, is trading at $1,566, up 2.5%.
All losses from the FTX collapse and accompanying market crash have now been recovered.
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