Ben Zhou, CEO of the crypto currency exchange Bybit, made remarkable statements about the large -scale attack by North Korean -related hacker group Lazarus in February. Zhou said that a total of $ 1.4 billion funds were stolen and about 28 %of these funds were unattended. Stating that the methods used in the attack are very complex, Zhou said that the technical monitoring process is still continuing. Developments brought up concerns about security deficits in the crypto money market.
Stolen funds were justified with mixers
In the attack, more than 500,000 Ether (ETH) were seized. According to Bybit, a significant portion of these ETHs were directed to confidentiality -oriented mixing platforms such as Wasabi. The procedures were hidden here and the follow -up of the funds was made almost impossible. Following this process, these ETHs were transferred to the Platforms between spouses (P2P) and overnight (OTC) platforms using bridge systems. These transfers between the chains made it even more difficult to trace.
According to data published by Bybit, 68.57 %of the stolen funds are traceable; 27.59 %is completely dark. The remaining 3.84 %was frozen by the authorized authorities. In particular, the unattended part, in the first place in the confidentiality mixers were processed and then distributed over multiple platforms. Lazarus reportedly benefited from platforms such as Thorchain, Exch, Lifi, Stargate and Sunswap.
Translated into more than 432,000 eth Bitcoin
According to Zhou’s statements, most of the stolen ETHs were transformed into Bitcoin to be made more liquid. Analysis within the scope of the investigation revealed that a total of 432,748 ETH was translated from Ether Bitcoine and that these BTCs were distributed to 35,772 different wallets. It was stated that an average of 0.28 BTC was transferred to each wallet. This distribution is thought to be specially planned for limiting traceability.
In addition, approximately 6 thousand ETH, ie about 16.77 million dollars of fund is still in the Ethereum block chain reportedly reportedly. The company said that this provides an important data in terms of technical monitoring. On the other hand, 5,443 suspected transaction notifications were received in the last two months within the scope of Lazarus Bounty initiative. While only 70 of these notifications were valid, Zhou made clear that more experts were needed.
Technological follow -up continues, new measures are on the road
Authorities, after this incident, strict strict inspections for the laundering of digital assets came to the agenda. It was reported that studies have been initiated for the development of technological monitoring systems and special algorithms for interchangeable transaction follow -up will be commissioned. Bybit announced that it plans to make serious updates in the security infrastructure to prevent repetition of similar attacks.
The incident brought new discussions on cold wallet safety in the crypto money market, traceability of transfers between chains, and controlability of decentralized platforms. Bybit said that he was working in cooperation with international law enforcement officers and they would act with transparency throughout the process.
Responsibility Rejection: The information contained in this article does not contain investment advice. Investors should be aware that crypto currencies carry high volatility and thus risk and carry out their operations in line with their own research.
