Lazarus Group hackers laundered $ 361 million in cryptocurrency overnight

The hackers who stole $ 1.4 billion worth of Ethereum ETH $1,827.99 Bridged Ether (StarkGate) -0.98% Market capitalization $0.16 billion VOL. 24 hours $0.39 billion cryptocurrency from the Bybit exchange have already laundered almost 30% of the stolen funds. According to the Spot On Chain analytical platform, the attacker converted 145,065 ETH in just five days, which is equivalent to $ 360.92 million.

To launder money, the hacker used the method of distributing assets into smaller amounts across several wallets and also used the THORChain liquidity protocol. This tool allows for cross-currency swaps in Bitcoin BTC $96,248.64 Bitcoin -0.99% Market capitalization $1.91 trillion VOL. 24 hours $0.95 billion and other digital assets, making it difficult to trace the origin of funds.

Currently, the attacker still has more than 354,330 ETH, which is even more than Ethereum creator Бутерін" href="https://noworries.news/biography/vitalij-buterin/" data-bio-id="3642">Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation have. An EmberCN analyst predicts that at the current rate, the entire amount will be laundered within the next 8−10 days.

This large-scale hack, which was organized by the North Korean hacker group Lazarus, has raised concerns about the security of assets stored on centralized exchanges. Despite the incident, Bybit stated that it had fully compensated for the losses by restoring 1:1 collateralization of client assets.

Since the hack, the price of Ethereum has fallen by 12%, and in the last day alone, it has lost 7.68%, dropping to $ 2,483. The incident once again highlighted the risks associated with storing cryptocurrencies on centralized platforms.