Major Crypto Exchanges Freeze Accounts With Millions Of Funds Tied To North Korean Hackers

Major centralized cryptocurrency exchange platforms Binance and Huobi froze accounts tied to the $100 million Harmony Horizon Bridge hack supposedly containing millions worth of laundered money allegedly from the infamous North Korean team of hackers known as the Lazarus Group.

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic headed the investigation and provided intelligence to Binance and Huobi, which swiftly acted on it by freezing the accounts with around $1.4 million worth of crypto.

Investigators of the blockchain analytic firm traced the entire funds using a fund mixer and credited the hack to the North Korean-backed cybercrime organization the Lazarus Group, information which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) later confirmed.

"The FBI continues to combat malicious cyber activity, including the threat posed by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) to the U.S. and our private sector partners. Through our investigation, we were able to confirm that the Lazarus Group (also known as APT38), cyber actors associated with the DPRK, are responsible for the theft of $100 million of virtual currency from Harmony's Horizon bridge reported on June 24, 2022," the federal bureau said in a January press release.

"Today, money laundering was detected and stolen funds linked to North Korea were frozen, in real-time. As an industry we have the power and responsibility to prevent digital assets from becoming a haven for money launderers and sanctions evaders, and ensure that they are a force for good," Elliptic CEO Simone Maini said in a Tuesday post.

According to Elliptic, the stolen funds were dormant for a while but became active very recently when its investigators discovered the funds were funneled through intricate chains of transactions to cryptocurrency exchanges.

The malicious actors attacked the Horizon cross-chain bridge, which services the Harmony blockchain, on June 24, 2022, which resulted in a loss of around $99.6 million in crypto assets.

The cybercriminals eventually laundered the funds using the OFAC-sanctioned privacy mixer Tornado Cash in an attempt to mask the trail to them.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time Binance and Huobi worked together to fight cybercriminals in an attempt to catch perpetrators of crypto theft.

On Jan. 16, these major cryptocurrency exchange platforms were able to freeze and recover 121 BTC or worth around $2.5 million at the time, funds believed to be linked to the Harmony hack.

The Lazarus Group was recently included in the list of sanctioned groups by the South Korean government along with four individuals and several other businesses and institutions believed to be working with the North Korean government.