North Korea's Lazarus Group Launders $1.4B in 10 Days, Largest Crypto Heist Ever

The hacker behind the Bybit incident has successfully laundered all $1.4 billion worth of stolen cryptocurrencies in just 10 days, marking the largest crypto theft in history. The hacker, believed to be part of North Korea's Lazarus Group, converted the stolen proceeds despite being identified as the main culprit by multiple blockchain analytics firms.

The hacker primarily used the decentralized crosschain protocol THORChain to launder the stolen funds, moving all 500,000 stolen Ether (ETH), now valued at approximately $1.04 billion. Blockchain security firm Lookonchain reported this development on March 4.

While the hacker has managed to launder the majority of the stolen funds, blockchain security experts are hopeful that a small portion of these funds can still be frozen and recovered by Bybit. Deddy Lavid, co-founder and CEO of blockchain security firm Cyvers, stated that while laundering through mixers and cross-chain swaps complicates recovery, there are still opportunities to trace and potentially freeze assets.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed on March 4 that approximately 77% of the funds were traceable, but over $280 million of the stolen funds "has gone dark," while 3% of the funds have been frozen. Bybit has continued to honor customer withdrawals and had fully replaced the stolen $1.4 billion in Ether by Feb. 24, just three days after the attack.

Crypto security firms like Cyvers are working on pre-emptive measures to combat future attacks. An emerging solution, known as offchain transaction validation, could prevent 99% of all crypto hacks and scams by preemptively simulating and validating blockchain transactions in an offchain environment, according to Michael Pearl, vice president of GTM strategy at Cyvers.