Lazarus, a well-known North Korean hacker group, transferred millions of dollars in Ethereum over the weekend.
This past weekend, The Lazarus Group began transferring the funds from the Harmony Bridge hack.
Blockchain detective “ZachXBT” posted information about the movements of significant sums of Ethereum on January 16. The Tornado Cash anonymizing service was the source of the cryptocurrency assets, which were routed through Railgun.
A smart contract privacy framework called Railgun conceals transactions using zero-knowledge proofs.
According to the analyst who tracked the transfers through more than 350 addresses, 41,000 ETH worth around $63.5 million was transferred through Railgun before being deposited on three different exchanges.
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
Lazarus and the Harmony Attack
Although the exchanges used were not explicitly mentioned, the analyst claimed that it is often withdrawn from them very swiftly.
Lazarus has become quite proficient at transferring illegal cryptocurrency while avoiding being caught by law enforcement. The Harmony Bridge attack in June 2022 was linked with the hacker group. Elliptic, a company that performs blockchain analysis, at the time provided a thorough report on the attack.
Harmony Bridge was hacked on June 24 for around $100 million. According to Elliptic, the stolen money was tracked through Tornado and to other wallets using “Tornado demixing capabilities.”.
The Lazarus Group has been involved in a number of major cryptocurrency heists worth more than $2 billion. It shifted its focus in 2022 to DeFi and cross-chain bridges and was suspected of being responsible for the $600 million Ronin Bridge attack.
The North Korean hacker group began phishing attacks in October to target cryptocurrency exchanges in Japan.
Bitcoin Market Outlook
Over the weekend, the cryptocurrency markets maintained their recent gains. With a 1.7% increase in total capitalization, they have risen even further during the Monday morning Asian trading session. According to CoinGecko, that amount has now surpassed $1 trillion, reaching a ten-week high.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin has increased by 1.8% on the day to reach $21,155. At $1,566 per coin, Ethereum was up 2.5%.
Since the FTX collapse and subsequent market fall, all losses have been recovered.
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