In the words of Elliptic CEO Simone Maini, “Today, money laundering was detected and stolen funds linked to North Korea were frozen, in real time.”
Crypto exchanges Binance and Huobi have frozen $1.4M worth of crypto assets stolen by Lazarus, a North Korean hacking group.
The news follows an earlier development when the two exchanges recovered 124 Bitcoin (BTC) from Lazarus.
In June 2022, Lazarus caused one of the largest crypto heists of the year when they exploited the Horizon Bridge. In the aftermath of the attack, the hackers escaped with over $100M in Ethereum (ETH), BNB (BNB), Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), and Dai (DAI) tokens.
The group became dormant after using the coin-mixing tool Tornado Cash to launder the stolen funds.
In its blog post, blockchain analysis firm Elliptic claimed that Lazarus attempted to move these assets to exchanges through complicated transactions. Elliptic noted that its investigators managed to track these funds through Tornado Cash.
Manini added,
“As an industry we have the power and responsibility to prevent digital assets becoming a haven for money launderers and sanctions evaders, and ensure that they are a force for good.”
Elliptic stated that it notified Binance and Huobi about its findings. Subsequently, the exchanges suspended the accounts linked to Lazarus and froze the stolen assets. However, Elliptic has yet to reveal the names of the frozen tokens.
Written by
Ayush Pande
Ayush Pande is a hardware, gaming, and crypto writer based in India. He's a tech enthusiast who's fascinated by the potential of blockchain technology.
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