Binance finds and returns cryptocurrency stolen by hackers from Korea

According to Чанпен Чжао" href="https://noworries.media/biography/chanpen-chzhao/" data-bio-id="3681">Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, the platform’s security specialists managed to find and return the bitcoins stolen from the Harmony bridge. The attack is believed to have been carried out by the Lazarus Group, a group of hackers from North Korea, who used the Tornado Cash mixer for money laundering over the weekend.

We detected Harmony One hacker fund movement. They previously tried to launder through Binance and we froze his accounts. This time he used Huobi. We assisted Huobi team to freeze his accounts. Together, 124 BTC have been recovered. CeFi helping to keep DeFi #SAFU! 🙏

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) January 16, 2023

According to CZ, the exchange managed to return 124 BTC (about $2.58 million). Earlier, the hackers tried to launder funds through Binance, but the platform's specialists immediately froze their accounts. During the new money laundering attempt, the attackers used the Huobi exchange, but Binance experts helped to detect illegal activity and block the hackers' accounts.

1/2 North Korea’s Lazarus Group had a very busy weekend moving $63.5m (~41000 ETH) from the Harmony bridge hack through Railgun before consolidating funds and depositing on three different exchanges. pic.twitter.com/huDumaJeSh

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 15, 2023

In addition to well-known crypto exchanges, Lazarus Group uses one of the most popular cryptocurrency mixers, Tornado Cash. According to ZachXBT, a cryptocurrency detective, hackers transferred 41,000 ETH (about $ 64 million) to the platform this weekend. Back in August, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash, linking it to the Lazarus Group fraudsters and illegal transactions worth more than $ 1 billion.

In June, right after the hacker attack, representatives of the Harmony protocol offered the Lazarus Group a $ 1 million reward for returning the stolen $ 100 million. However, the attackers were not interested in this amount.