UPDATED: April 29, 2024, 10:10AM EDT
North Korea’s Lazarus Group laundered $200 million worth of crypto into fiat currency between August 2020 and October 2023, according to an investigation by crypto sleuth ZachXBT.
The investigation looked at over 25 exploits on numerous blockchains. It traced illicitly gained funds that went through mixers, peer-to-peer marketplaces and centralized exchanges, to show how the funds were removed from the crypto ecosystem.
“Thousands of people in the space have been impacted directly and indirectly by Lazarus Group attacks and it seems that number will only continue to increase,” ZachXBT wrote on the social media platform X Monday.
The Lazarus Group uses sophisticated cyberattacks to steal funds. The Group has been tied to large scale crypto exploits such as the $100 million Harmony bridge exploit in January 2023 and the Ronin bridge hack of March 2022, The Block previously reported.
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About Author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.
