• Notorious North Korean hacking gang Lazarus Group transferred stolen money in the Harmony Bridge attack.
• The organization transferred over $63.5 million, or approximately 41,000 ETH.
• Funds were frozen by Binance and Huobi after suspicious money transfers were detected.
The weekend of January 15th, 2021 was a busy one for the notorious North Korean hacking group, Lazarus Group. The group had just executed an attack on the Harmony Bridge, a blockchain-based platform, and had successfully stolen over $63.5 million, or approximately 41,000 ETH.
The theft was discovered by blockchain detective ZachXBT, who had been tracking the trail of more than 350 ETH addresses. Specifically, the funds had been transferred through Railgun, a private smart contract platform that uses zero-knowledge proofs to hide financial transactions.
What’s more, the stolen funds had then been transferred to three different exchanges, where they were quickly frozen by Binance and Huobi. Evidently, the exchanges had been monitoring the transactions, and had immediately detected the suspicious money transfers. Binance’s CEO, CZ, tweeted that the exchange had previously tried to launder the money through Binance, and had subsequently frozen the accounts involved.
Fortunately, the exchanges were able to act quickly and prevent the hackers from profiting off the stolen funds. While the attack was a reminder of the need for improved security measures, it also demonstrated the effectiveness of existing measures in preventing money laundering. Hopefully, by continuing to improve security protocols, blockchain-based platforms can become even more secure in the future.