North Korean hackers laundered $6 million in ETH linked to the Harmony hack

PeckShield analysts said that some of the funds were transferred to Huobi and Bybit crypto exchanges

16.02.2023 - 11:45

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3 min

What’s new? Cybersecurity company PeckShield experts have reported that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus laundered about $6 million in Ethereum related to the Horizon cross-chain protocol exploit on the Harmony network in June 2022. According to analysts, the attackers, through a series of multiple transactions, integrated the assets into the wallet and then partially exchanged ETH for Tether (USDT) stablecoins. Experts said that part of the USDT was transferred to the Huobi and Bybit crypto exchanges.

#PeckShieldAlert North Korea's Lazarus Group laundered ~$6M worth of $ETH from Harmony Horizon Bridge exploit via the peel chain layering process & integrated them into 0xbae5, and then swapped some $ETH for $USDT Seems a portion of the $USDT was transferred to Huobi & Bybit pic.twitter.com/qKBk2lUKT1 — PeckShieldAlert (@PeckShieldAlert) February 16, 2023

Harmony is a Layer 1 (L1) network built in the Ethereum ecosystem, providing high transaction speeds and low fees. The Horizon cross-chain bridge links Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Bitcoin networks. As of February 16, the native token ONE is trading at $0,0272, having gained 12,4% in 24 hours, according to Binance.

How were the stolen funds moved? Immediately after the hack, analysts at Elliptic linked it to Lazarus, and later the FBI confirmed the information. On January 13, hackers laundered $60 million worth of ETH through the RAILGUN protocol and converted it into BTC. Part of the funds was frozen by the crypto service providers, and the remaining assets hackers transferred to 11 addresses.

Later, hackers began transferring these assets to exchanges through complex transactions. On January 16, using current Elliptic data, Binance and Huobi froze 124 stolen BTC (~$2,58 million at the time). In February, Elliptic representatives reported that Binance and Huobi were able to freeze accounts with cryptocurrency for another $1,4 million.

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