Hacker Group Lazarus Stole 41.000 Ethereum But Can’t Be Cashed Out

JAKARTA – As many as 41.000 Ethereum (ETH) stolen by the well-known hacker group from North Korea, Lazarus Group, has reportedly begun to be transferred to a number of leading crypto exchanges including Binance and Huobi. However, the hacker group failed to cash it because Binance managed to freeze the stolen crypto assets.

Later, Lazarus moved it to the Huobi crypto exchange. However, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said he was working with Huobi to prevent such activity.

The movement of these crypto assets began to move on January 15, 2023. Tens of thousands of ETH crypto assets were stolen by Lazarus in June 2022. Lazarus hacked Harmony One's connecting network, namely the Horizon bridge. A group of North Korean hackers managed to steal 41.000 Ether which is worth 63.2 million US dollars at current exchange rates (equivalent to IDR 957 billion).

During the hack, the Lazarus group was found to be using a multi-signature wallet to take over the network. According to Onchain researcher Zachxbt, stolen funds from the Horizon bridge started moving 206 days later.

"North Korean Lazarus Group had a very busy weekend moving 63.5 million US dollars (roughly 41.000 ETH) from the Harmony bridge hack via Railgun before consolidating the funds and storing them on three different exchanges," Zachxbt wrote in a Twitter tweet.

The funds are reportedly deposited with OKEx, Huobi, and Binance. Zachxbt added that Huobi and Binance have frozen some of the ethereum shipped to the exchange.

Knowing about this action, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) as the CEO of Binance confirmed that his party had frozen the funds. He explained: "We detected the movement of Harmony One hacker funds."

“They previously tried to launder via Binance and we froze their account. This time they used Huobi. We assisted the Huobi team in freezing their account. Together, 124 BTC has been recovered,” added CZ.

Previously, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic disclosed that the funds in the Ethereum crypto asset had links to the activities of the Lazarus Group. The North Korean hacker group has been accused of carrying out numerous attacks on various crypto projects in recent years. Elliptic also assessed that Lazarus was behind the Ronin attack which cost the company USD 620 million or around IDR 9.3 trillion based on the current exchange rate.