The Lazarus Group, believed to be connected with North Korea, has successfully laundered at least $300 million of the $1.5 billion stolen in a recent hack on ByBit, a crypto exchange. Experts indicate that the group operates almost continuously, leveraging advanced techniques to obscure their money trail. ByBit has managed to account for some of the theft, but reports indicate that 20% of the funds are now untraceable. The U.S. government suspects these hacks are funding North Korea's military ambitions, giving rise to ongoing efforts to combat such cyber threats.
"Every minute matters for the hackers who are trying to confuse the money trail and they are extremely sophisticated in what they're doing," says Dr Tom Robinson.
"I imagine they have an entire room of people doing this using automated tools and years of experience. We can also see from their activity that they only take a few hours break each day, possibly working in shifts to get the crypto turned into cash."
"Out of all the criminal actors involved in cryptocurrency, North Korea is the best at laundering crypto," Dr Tom Robinson says.
Elliptic's analysis tallies with ByBit, which says that 20% of the funds have now 'gone dark', meaning it is unlikely to ever be recovered.
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