North Korean Lazarus Group amasses over $40M in Bitcoin, information reveals

by Jeremy

North Korean hacking collective Lazarus Group holds a whopping $47 million in cryptocurrency, most of which is in Bitcoin (BTC), new information reveals.

In keeping with information collated on Dune Analytics from 21.co, the father or mother firm of 21Shares, wallets related to the Lazarus Group presently maintain round $47 million value of digital property, together with $42.5 million in BTC, $1.9 million in Ether (ETH), $1.1 million in BNB (BNB) and a further $640,000 in stablecoins, primarily Binance USD (BUSD).

Nevertheless, the quantity of crypto held seems to have dropped from the $86 million the group held on Sept. 6, just a few days after the Stake.com hack by which Lazarus was implicated.

The Dune dashboard tracks 295 wallets recognized by the USA Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Workplace of International Property Management (OFAC) as being owned by the hacking group, it famous.

Lazarus Group crypto holdings. Supply: Dune Analytics

Surprisingly, the group doesn’t maintain any privateness cash, corresponding to Monero (XMR), Sprint (DASH) or Zcash (ZEC), that are arguably a lot more durable to hint.

In the meantime, Lazarus crypto wallets are nonetheless extremely energetic, with the latest transaction being recorded on Sept. 20.

21.co additionally famous that the group’s holdings are prone to be a lot larger than what has been reported. “We must always observe that this can be a lower-bound estimation of Lazarus Group’s crypto holdings based mostly on publicly obtainable info,” it acknowledged.

Associated: 3 steps crypto buyers can take to keep away from hacks by the Lazarus Group

On Sept. 13, Cointelegraph reported that Lazarus Group carried out the assault on crypto alternate CoinEx, which misplaced at the least $55 million.

The FBI has additionally pointed the finger at Lazarus for the Alphapo, CoinsPaid and Atomic Pockets hacks, which collectively added as much as greater than $200 million that the group stole in 2023.

Nevertheless, Chainalysis reported that crypto thefts by North Korea-linked hackers are down a whopping 80% from 2022. As of mid-September, North Korea-linked teams had stolen a complete of $340.4 million in crypto, down from a document $1.65 billion in pilfered digital property in 2022.

Late final week, U.S. federal authorities warned of “vital threat” for potential assaults on U.S. healthcare and public well being sector entities by Lazarus Group.

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