North Korean gang still accessing its $600 million crypto haul

[jim bell]

https://news.yahoo.com/north-korean-gang-still-accessing-154600606.html


"WASHINGTON - North Korean hackers who last month carried out one of the largest cryptocurrency thefts ever are still laundering their haul more than a week after they were identified as the thieves."

"The cybercriminals' continued access to the money, more than $600 million stolen from the Axie Infinity video game, underscores the limits of law enforcement's ability to stop the flow of illicit cryptocurrency across the globe. The hackers are still moving their loot, most recently about $4.5 million worth of the Ethereum currency on Friday, according to data from cryptocurrency tracking site Etherscan - eight days after the Treasury Department attempted to freeze those assets by sanctioning the digital wallet the group used in its attack."




"The gang, which the Treasury Department identified as the Lazarus Group, also known for the 2014 hacking of Sony Pictures, so far has laundered nearly $100 million - about 17 percent - of the stolen crypto, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. They moved their haul beyond the immediate reach of U.S. authorities by converting it into the cryptocurrency Ethereum, which unlike the cryptocurrency they stole cannot be hobbled remotely. Since then, the gang has worked to obscure the crypto's origins primarily by sending installments of it through a program called Tornado Cash, a service known as a mixer that pools digital assets to hide their owners."

"Authorities and major crypto industry players are scrambling to keep up. Treasury sanctioned three more addresses associated with the gang on Friday, as Binance, a large international crypto exchange, announced it had frozen $5.8 million worth of crypto the hackers had transferred onto its platform."
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