As much as $7 billion in cryptocurrency has been illicitly laundered through cross-chain crime, with the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group linked to the theft of roughly $900 million of those proceeds between July 2022 and July of this year.
“As traditional entities such as mixers continue to be subject to seizures and sanctions scrutiny, the crypto crime displacement to chain- or asset-hopping typologies is also on the rise,” blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said in a new report published this week.
The North Korean hacking crew is estimated to have stolen nearly $240 million in cryptocurrency since June 2023, following a series of attacks targeting Atomic Wallet ($100 million), CoinsPaid ($37.3 million), Alphapo ($60 million), Stake.com ($41 million), and CoinEx ($31 million).
The threat actor has also been linked to the use of Avalanche Bridge to deposit more than 9,500 bitcoin, while simultaneously employing cross-chain solutions to move some of the plundered assets.
The disclosure comes as South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has warned of North Korea attacking its shipbuilding sector since the start of the year.
“The hacking methods mainly used by North Korean hacking organizations were to occupy and bypass the PCs of IT maintenance companies, and to install malicious code after distributing phishing emails to internal employees,” the agency said.
Source: https://thehackernews.com/
