Crypto sleuths pin $100 million Harmony theft on Lazarus Group
Investigators at a blockchain analysis outfit have linked the theft of $100 million in crypto assets last week to the notorious North Korean-based cybercrime group Lazarus. The company said it had tracked the movement of some of the stolen cryptocurrency to a so-called mixer used to launder such ill-gotten funds.
Blockchain startup Harmony announced June 23 that its Horizon Bridge – a cross-chain bridge service used to transfer assets between Harmony's blockchain and other blockchains – had been attacked and crypto assets like Ethereum, Wrapped Bitcoin, Binance Coin, and Tether stolen.
According to blockchain analytics company Elliptic, the attacker immediately turned to Uniswap, a decentralized exchange, to convert most of the assets into 85,837 Ethereum, which researchers said is a common method used by hackers to avoid the stolen assets from being seized.
Days later, the thief began moving the Ethereum into Tornado Cash, a mixer used to launder stolen assets. As of June 29, the attacker had moved about 35,000 Ethereum – about $39 million – to Tornado Cash and the process is continuing, Elliptic researchers wrote in a blog post.
