Bybit chief releases details on the movement of $1,4 billion stolen from the exchange

What’s new? Bybit CEO Ben Zhou has published details about the February 21 hack of the crypto exchange by the DPRK hacker group Lazarus, making it the largest single theft in history. The entrepreneur reported that a total of 500 000 Ethereum (ETH) blockchain native tokens worth $1,4 billion were withdrawn from the exchange. Of these, 27,59% were missing, but 68,57% of the assets are still traceable on the blockchain. Another 3,84% was frozen through collaboration with third-party platforms.

Source: X.com

What else is known? Untraceable funds were hidden thanks to transfers to cryptocurrency mixers, which were then routed via cross-chain protocols to peer-to-peer (P2P) and over-the-counter (OTC) platforms.

The Wasabi mixer is the most popular among North Korean hackers. They laundered some BTC through this service and only then distributed it to other services with similar functionality, including CryptoMixer, Tornado Cash, and Railgun.

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After that, the funds were sent to cross-chain protocols and decentralized exchanges Thorchain, eXch, Lombard, LiFi, Stargate and SunSwap. Eventually, the assets ended up on P2P and OTC fiat currency exchange services.

The funds were then directed to cross-chain protocols and decentralized exchanges Thorchain, eXch, Lombard, LiFi, Stargate, and SunSwap. The assets eventually ended up on P2P and OTC fiat currency exchange services.

The exchange’s analysts managed to establish the distribution of assets. Thus, 432 748 ETH worth $1,21 billion (84,45% of the total amount) was converted into bitcoins via Thorchain. Another 342 974 ETH worth $960,33 million (67,25%) was converted into 10 003 BTC on 35 772 crypto wallets (an average of 0,28 BTC each).

Another 5991 ETH worth $16,77 million (1,17%) remained in the Ethereum blockchain on 12 490 wallets (an average of 0,48 ETH each).

Further, 944 BTC worth $90,62 million (6,34%) was sent to the Wasabi mixer, while 531 BTC was transferred from to Ethereum via Thorchain.

In addition, over the past 60 days, the exchange team received 5443 analyst reports aimed at facilitating freezes and refunds. The authors of 70 of them were rewarded for providing useful information.

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After the hack, Ben Zhou claimed that the exchange would be able to cover the losses in case the funds could not be returned. However, the team later launched an optimization process that will see the closure of a number of Web3 trading and passive income services, as well as the NFT marketplace.