The North Korea-affiliated Lazarus Group has stolen almost $240 million in cryptocurrency since June 2023, as a result of a significant escalation of its attacks.
The infamous hacking group, who have been responsible for many attacks against cryptocurrency systems is suspected of beingbbehind the theft of $31 million in digital assets from the CoinEx exchange on September 12th 2023.
The attack against CoinEx adds to a long list of recent attacks targeting exchanges belonging to Atomic Wallet ($100 million), CoinsPaid ($37.3 million), Alphapo ($60 million), and Stake.com ($41 million).
Tracking the money
Crypto tracking experts at Elliptic said “Some of the funds stolen from CoinEx were sent to an address which was used by the Lazarus group to launder funds stolen from Stake.com, albeit on a different blockchain. Following this, the funds were bridged to Ethereum, using a bridge previously used by Lazarus, and then sent back to an address known to be controlled by the CoinEx hacker.”
North Korea has leveraged cryptocurrency thefts in the past as a way to circumvent sanctions and fund its weapons programs.
In recent years, there has been a marked rise in the size and scale of cyber attacks against cryptocurrency-related businesses by North Korea.
This shift in size and scale has coincided with an apparent acceleration in the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
