Three digital investigative companies have determined that North Korean hackers are most likely responsible for an assault last week that resulted in the theft of up to $100 million in cryptocurrencies from a U.S. corporation.
The cryptocurrency was taken on June 23 from Horizon Bridge, a Harmony blockchain service that enables asset transfers to other blockchains.
Since then, the hackers’ activities raises the possibility that they are connected to North Korea, one of the most active cyberterrorist nations, according to analysts. According to U.N. sanctions observers, Pyongyang utilizes the money it has been robbed of to promote its nuclear and missile programs.
A blockchain company working with Harmony to investigate the assault, Chainalysis, claimed on Twitter on Tuesday that the attack’s pattern and high-velocity structured payments to a mixer, which were intended to hide the source of money, are reminiscent of other operations related to North Korean agents.
Other investigators concurred with that conclusion.
According to transaction behavior, “preliminarily this seems like a North Korean hack,” said Nick Carlsen, a former FBI analyst who now works for the American company TRM Labs and looks into North Korea’s cryptocurrency thefts.
Based on the nature of the attack and the subsequent laundering of the stolen assets, there are strong indicators that North Korea’s Lazarus Group may be accountable for this heist, another company, Elliptic, claimed in a report on Thursday.
According to the report, “the thief is attempting to break the transaction trail back to the original theft.” This makes it simpler to withdraw money from an exchange.
If verified, the assault would be the seventh exploit this year that could be confidently ascribed to North Korea, totaling $1 billion in stolen cash, according to Chainalysis. This would account for 60% of the total assets taken in 2022.
Experts and South Korean officials told Reuters that the recent decline in bitcoin values may have made it more difficult for North Korea to sell its stolen assets, potentially endangering a crucial source of financing for the sanctions-strapped nation.
