Finance

Hacker groups’ road leads all the way to North Korea

According to the US, the North Korean hacker group Lazarus appears to be behind one of the biggest crypto hacks, with losses of $625 million.

The US warns of North Korean hackers

The crypto industry is notoriously volatile and uncertain. Since its inception, it has been plagued by a series of attacks from various quarters. The latest of these, the hacking of the Ronin network, is one of the largest in history, with a loss of $625 million. The US government has warned of the attacks and linked one small Asian state to the hack. In the background, according to the US, is North Korea, which has been linked to the latest hack.

The US government has observed North Korean actors targeting various crypto and blockchain companies. These may include exchanges, the Defi protocols themselves, and several play-to-earn games in multiple blockchains, such as the case of Ronin, which is one of the power sources for Axie Infinity. https://india-bonusesfinder.com/free-spins/ can therefore provide a secure platform for gaming.

Indeed, Tony Sloterman, product owner of Casino Bonuses Finder, believes that online security is everything, especially when it comes to online gambling or investing in the crypto world.

Lots of people lost their funds due to security breach

In the second-largest crypto hack in history, some $625 million in funds were wiped from the Ronin network. Many desperate owners of their money have sent messages to one of the Ethereum addresses used by the hackers, hoping to get at least some of their funds back.

One of the Ronin network users happened to notice the bug, as he could not get his funds transferred from his address. It was only at this point that the Ronin network itself realised that the transfer had failed because there were no funds in the chain either.

The network had been hacked, and the funds were gone. All the way down to $625 million. At this point, a few days had passed since the hack without anyone noticing anything.

The US government has warned that North Korean state-backed hackers known as the Lazarus Group are attacking blockchain organisations with Trojan cryptocurrency applications.

Since then, the root of the incident has been further investigated. Both the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the US Department of the Treasury reported that they have observed that North Korea has been targeting various blockchain and crypto organisations.

This includes various crypto exchanges, cryptocurrency companies, private equity funds investing in cryptocurrency and of course individuals. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and play-to-earn games have also taken a hit.

A hacker group called Lazarus

The US Treasury Department has identified a cryptocurrency address used in hacking and linked it to a North Korean hacker group called Lazarus.

The US has therefore called on the UN Security Council to freeze Lazarus Group’s assets and place it on the blacklist. Despite this, the hacker group has already managed to launder around 17% of the hacked assets.

The US Treasury Department has linked hackers to three different addresses, while Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, has announced it has frozen up to $5.8 million worth of stolen crypto.

Even now, the hacker group has still managed to move the stolen funds. The latest amount, around $4.5 million in Ethereum cryptocurrency, was transferred, according to Etherscan. This happened only eight days after the US Treasury Department had tried to freeze the funds stolen by the hacker group, imposing sanctions on the digital wallet they were using.

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Shankar

Shankar is a tech blogger who occasionally enjoys penning historical fiction. With over a thousand articles written on tech, business, finance, marketing, mobile, social media, cloud storage, software, and general topics, he has been creating material for the past eight years.

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