Binance and Huobi of virtual currency exchanges succeeded in recovering bit coins equivalent to 335 million yen from North Korean hacking groups



In recent years, virtual currency has been gaining popularity as an investment target, but it has been pointed out that there are cases where virtual currency is used for money laundering by criminal organizations, and virtual currency itself is also a target of hacking. . Meanwhile, the security teams of virtual currency exchanges Binance and Huobi cooperated to freeze the account used for money laundering by the North Korean hacking group Lazarus Group , and 124 BTC (about 335 million 10,000 yen) was reported.

Binance, Huobi team up to recover $2.5M from Harmony One hackers
https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-huobi-team-up-to-recover-2-5m-from-harmony-one-hackers

Lazarus Group Moves 41,000 Ethereum Nabbed From Harmony Bridge Hack - Decrypt
https://decrypt.co/119315/lazarus-group-moves-41000-ethereum-nabbed-harmony-bridge-hack

In June 2022, $100 million worth of cryptocurrency (approximately ¥14 billion at the time) was stolen from the blockchain bridge Horizon Bridge used by the blockchain platform Harmony (One) . Investigations by security companies and experts have identified the attack as being carried out by the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking group.

Virtual currency worth 14 billion yen is stolen from the blockchain bridge - GIGAZINE



North Korea-backed hacking groups have stepped up attacks targeting cryptocurrencies in recent years. According to Chainalysis, an American cryptocurrency analysis company, between January and September 2022, approximately $1 billion (approximately 140 billion yen) of cryptocurrency was stolen by North Korea, just from those confirmed at exchanges. I'm assuming.

In North Korea, theft of virtual currency is one of the regime's main sources of income - GIGAZINE



ZachXBT , a blockchain analyst, said that on Sunday, January 15, 2023 local time, the Lazarus Group stole $63.5 million (about 8.2 billion yen) of ETH (Ethereum) from the Horizon Bridge on the weekend. I reported that I sent money to 3 different cryptocurrency exchanges. Hackers used Railgun , a privacy protocol that prevents tracking of cryptocurrency holdings and transaction information, to carry out the money laundering, ZachXBT said.



On Monday, Jan. 16, 16 hours after ZachXBT reported, Binance founder and CEO Changpong Zhao said, “We detected the movement of funds by the hackers who attacked Harmony One. We tried to launder money through Binance, we froze their account, this time we used Huobi, we helped Huobi's team freeze the hacker's account, totaling 124 BTC recovered.' Decrypt, a cryptocurrency-related media, touched on Mr. Zhao's statement that he recovered 'BTC' instead of 'ETH', suggesting that hackers exchanged ETH for BTC in the process of laundering money. I pointed out that there is



Justin Sun , founder of the cryptocurrencyTRON and adviser to Huobi, also responded, saying, 'Thanks to our dedicated team and the cooperation of Binance, the hackers of Harmony One were able to reach us through Huobi. We are proud to have detected and stopped attempted money laundering.'



Decrypt also reports that out of the three cryptocurrency exchanges to which Lazarus Group sent ETH, two were reportedly Binance and Huobi, while the remaining one was reportedly OKX . However, it is unknown what kind of measures OKX took in response to the suspicion of money laundering by Lazarus Group.

When asked, ``Does Binance share information such as exploits and hacks with all other exchanges in real time?'', Zhao said, ``Our security teams are talking to each other. Not all exchanges are supportive (some have the wrong competitive mentality), but many are. I didn't participate, so I don't know the details.'



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in Security, Posted by log1h_ik