Lazarus Group Moved $63.5 Million From The Harmony Bridge Hack

Key Points:

• Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacker organization, was recently discovered to be transferring stolen funds through exchanges and platforms for unlawful withdrawals.
• The stolen funds from the Harmony bridge theft were transferred through Railgun with a transaction size of up to $63.5 million before being consolidated and deposited on three different exchanges.

The beginning of the year seems to be a slow start to work for everyone. However, hackers are busy all the time. North Korea’s Lazarus Group was recently found to be transferring stolen funds through platforms and exchanges for unauthorized withdrawals.

According to the on-chain sleuth ZachXBT, one transaction was confirmed by Lazarus Group with a transaction amount of up to $63.5 million (~41000 ETH). The stolen funds were transferred from the Harmony bridge hack through Railgun before consolidating funds and depositing them on three different exchanges.

Looking at the diagram below, it can be seen that the transaction method of the group is to split the funds and switch between many different wallet addresses to avoid tracing the source of the funds.

Previously, in June, Harmony’s Horizon cross-chain bridge was confirmed to have been hacked by hackers, with initial damage estimated at up to $100 million. Horizon asserts that the attacker has only penetrated the bridge to Ethereum while the bridge to Bitcoin is still safe.

Despite this, the project suspended Horizon to investigate the vulnerability, as well as notify exchanges to prevent hackers from laundering money. Because of many defects in the working mechanism, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin once said that cross-chain solutions should not be trusted.

After much tracking information about the stolen funds, sources identified Lazarus Group as the organization behind the hack. Mixers such as Tornado Cash are used to hide the transaction trail.

The team behind the Harmony blockchain project has proposed the minting of up to 4.97 billion worth of its native token ONE to compensate victims of the hack. The proposal has been met with a significant amount of backlash from members of the community, with many highlighting concerns that such a large issuance of new tokens would result in inflationary pressure on the asset and bring its value down.

DISCLAIMER: The Information on this website is provided as general market commentary and does not constitute investment advice. We encourage you to do your own research before investing.

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Harold

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