Binance and Huobi freeze $1.4 million in crypto linked to North Korean hackers
Cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Huobi have again frozen accounts linked to the $100 million Harmony Horizon bridge attack on June 24, 2022.
About $1.4 million worth of crypto frozen by the trading platforms came from accounts linked to the notorious Lazarus group operating out of North Korea.
The survey was conducted by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, according to a report shared by the firm on February 14. However, the firm did not state which coins or tokens were frozen.
Elliptic explained that it passed the intelligence on to Binance and Houbi who then acted swiftly to freeze Lazarus Group-affiliated accounts:
“The stolen funds remained dormant until recently, when our investigators began to see them routed through complex chains of transactions, to stock exchanges. By immediately notifying these platforms of these illegal deposits, they were able to suspend these accounts and freeze funds.”
Since the Harmony exploit, it has been well documented that the Lazarus Group resorted to the now US OFAC-sanctioned privacy mixer Tornado Cash in an attempt to break the transaction trail back to the original theft.
While this allegedly makes it easier to cash out funds on an exchange, Elliptical investigators were able to track all of the stolen funds sent through the mixer in this case, the report said.
Elliptic CEO Simone Maini suggested that the events showed that the industry was taking responsibility for preventing money laundering and stopping crypto from becoming a “haven” for illegal activity:
“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 havens for money launderers and sanctions evaders, and ensure they are a force for good.”
The Harmony Bridge attack was also attributed to the Lazarus Group by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on January 24.
This is not the first time that Binance and Huobi have collaborated on the matter.
The two platforms were able to freeze and recover 121 Bitcoin (BTC), worth $2.5 million at the time, linked to the January 16 Harmony attack.
Related: Illegal Cross-Chain Transfers Expected to Grow to $10B: How to Prevent Them
However, the recovery was only a fraction of the $63.5 million that was laundered over that weekend, according to crypto-hospital ZachXBT, which he claims was routed through the Ethereum-based privacy protocol RAILGUN before being sent to three different exchanges:
Recent efforts by Elliptic last week also found that the Lazarus Group has laundered about $100 million in Bitcoin through “Sinbad,” which it claims is a relaunch of the now OFAC-sanctioned privacy blender Blender.
The Lazarus Group is believed to have stolen well over $2 billion in crypto since shifting its focus to the industry in 2017, according to estimates from Elliptic.
