The United States was able to return some of the cryptocurrencies stolen by North Korean hackers

US law enforcement agencies, together with Chainalysis crypto detectives, helped the Axie Infinity project recover some of the cryptocurrencies stolen by hackers from North Korea from the Ronin sidechain project.

As it became known, the investigators managed to find and return digital assets worth $ 30 million. Crypto detectives intercepted the funds when the attackers transferred them to an exchange and wanted to exchange them for fiat currency.

It is worth noting that the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group is suspected of attacking the Ronin sidechain of Axie Infinity, whose representatives used the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer to launder stolen funds. Apparently, the hackers did not have time to launder all $ 625 million before Tornado Cash was blocked and are now looking for other ways to launder money. However, as it turned out, not very successfully.

«This is the first case when we were able to confiscate cryptocurrency stolen by the Lazarus group. We areconfident that it will not be the last,» said Erin Plante, Head of Investigations at Chainalysis.

As a reminder, Sky Mavis Inc. suffered losses of 173,600 ETH and $ 25.5 million due to the hacker attack — 1/3 of the stolen assets belonged to the company, but more than 100,000 ETH were gambling. Also, it has recently become known that hackers were able to steal funds thanks to spyware downloaded by one of the Axie Infinity developers.