- News of the development was announced by Chainalysis.
- Crypto was stolen from the Ronin Network by Lazarus, a hacker outfit.
Cryptocurrencies worth $30 million were recovered from hackers with ties to North Korea by U.S. authorities. News of the development was announced by Chainalysis, a blockchain data platform.
Erin Plante, Senior Director of Investigations at Chainalysis, provided further context in a recent blog post. According to his article, the government has benefited from Chainalysis’ cooperation with law enforcement and other crypto groups. Collectively, they have the potential to acquire almost $30M in crypto.
Joint Effort Brings Small Yet Positive Result
Cryptocurrencies of this kind were taken from the Ronin Network by Lazarus, a hacker outfit with ties to North Korea. Axie Infinity’s gaming business transactions are carried out using the Ronin Network. The Ronin Blockchain team revealed in a blog post on March 29, 2022, that the network has been hacked for 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC. Those two trades cost $625 million.
The DeFi protocol said it was coordinating with law enforcement on a one-on-one basis to bring those responsible for the crimes to justice. According to Chainalysis, the stolen funds were dispersed among 12,000 unique cryptocurrency addresses.
Tornado Cash, a decentralized cryptocurrency mixer, was also found to be the major tool utilized by the hackers. However, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Department of the Treasury blacklisted Tornado Cash in August 2022 for facilitating the laundering of over $7 billion in digital currency.
A particular note to OFAC was its role in the laundering of nearly $455 million in stolen cryptocurrencies from Axie Infinity. Moreover, the Lazarus Outfit, a state-sponsored hacking group in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), was also called out for its involvement.
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