Hackers from North Korea are suspected to be behind one of the largest thefts of crypto assets in history.
The FBI announced on Thursday that the Lazarus Group, a hacker group connected to the North Korean government, stole $620 million in assets from the Ronin blockchain on March 29.
“The FBI continues to combat malicious cyber activity, including the threat posed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the U.S. and our private sector partners,” the FBI said in a statement. “Through our investigation, we were able to confirm Lazarus Group and APT38, cyber actors associated with the DPRK, are responsible for the theft of $620 million in Ethereum reported on March 29.”
The statement continued: “The FBI, in coordination with Treasury and other U.S. government partners, will continue to expose and combat the DPRK’s use of illicit activities — including cybercrime and cryptocurrency theft — to generate revenue for the regime.”
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The Treasury Department added an Ethereum address marked as “Ronin Bridge Exploiter” to the United States’s North Korean sanctions list on Thursday. The address held more than $445 million in crypto assets as of Thursday, according to Vice.
The Ronin blockchain is a shared database for tracking transactions of the Ethereum cryptocurrency apart from the main Ethereum blockchain. Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin operate on a blockchain, which is essentially a public ledger.
The Ronin blockchain is operated by the same people behind Axie Infinity, an extremely popular online video game. Ronin announced on March 30 that hackers had broken into its system on March 23 and stolen more than $620 million in crypto assets over six days. The hack was discovered when a user claimed to be unable to withdraw 5,000 ethers from the blockchain-based game. The network halted all exchanges while collaborating with law enforcement to ensure all funds were recovered or reimbursed.
Ronin said the Lazarus Group compromised the network’s validator nodes, which help approve transactions, and sent 173,600 ethers, or $586 million in crypto assets, to an anonymous Ethereum wallet. The Lazarus group also drained $25.5 million of USD coins from the system through “hacked private keys,” according to Ronin.
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The Lazarus Group is a notorious hacker group blamed for several high-profile hacks, including the 2014 Sony Pictures breach, distributed denial-of-service attacks against South Korean and U.S. websites in 2009, and a massive ransomware attack in 2017 against more than 200,000 computers in 150 countries. The group is considered a “state-sponsored hacking organization,” according to the FBI.
