North Korean Lazarus Group Moves $64M ETH From Harmony Hack

The Lazarus Group has been moving its spoils from the Harmony Bridge hack this weekend.

On Jan. 16, blockchain sleuth ‘ZachXBT’ posted details of the movements of large amounts of Ethereum. The crypto assets originated from the anonymizing service Tornado Cash and went through Railgun.

Railgun is a smart contract privacy platform that uses zero-knowledge proofs to obfuscate transactions.

Around 41,000 ETH worth roughly $63.5 million was sent through Railgun before being deposited on three different exchanges, according to the analyst who traced the movements through more than 350 addresses.

1/2 North Korea’s Lazarus Group had a very busy weekend moving $63.5m (~41000 ETH) from the Harmony bridge hack through Railgun before consolidating funds and depositing on three different exchanges. pic.twitter.com/huDumaJeSh

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 15, 2023

Lazarus Linked to Harmony Attack

The exchanges used were not specified, but the analyst said that it is usually withdrawn from them very quickly.

Lazarus has become quite adept at moving illicit crypto and preventing authorities from tracking them down. The hacker group was linked with the Harmony Bridge attack in June 2022. Blockchain analysis provider Elliptic published a detailed report of the attack at the time.

Harmony Bridge was hacked for around $100 million on June 24, as reported by CryptoPotato. Elliptic used “Tornado demixing capabilities” to trace the stolen funds through Tornado and onwards to other wallets, it stated.

The Lazarus Group has been linked to several large crypto heists totaling more than $2 billion. In 2022 it turned its focus to DeFi and cross-chain bridges and was also believed to be behind the $600 million Ronin Bridge attack.

In October, the North Korean hacker group targeted crypto asset exchanges in Japan with phishing attacks.

Crypto Market Outlook

Crypto markets have held on to recent gains over the weekend. They have pushed even higher during the Monday morning Asian trading session with a 1.7% gain in total capitalization. That figure has now reached a ten-week high of over $1 trillion, according to CoinGecko.

Bitcoin has gained a further 1.8% on the day to reach $21,155 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, Ethereum was up 2.5%, trading at $1,566.

All losses from the FTX collapse and resultant market crash have now been recovered.