The authorities of South Korea have confirmed that behind the 2019 Upbit crypto hack of fifty million {dollars}, there are the North Koreans Lazarus and Andariel. The quantity stolen then of 342,000 ETH now exceeds a billion {dollars}.
Upbit and the crypto hack 2019: the North Korean Lazarus and Andariel confirmed as the accountable events
The National Office of Investigation of South Korea has confirmed that the actual culprits of the 2019 Upbit crypto hack are the North Korean hacker teams Lazarus and Andariel.
Apparently, it took a full 5 years to formally verify North Korea’s involvement in a bull hack of cryptocurrencies.
From what has emerged, it appears that evidently the flows of cryptocurrencies and IP addresses have been tracked. Not solely that, the South Korean police have analyzed the use of North Korean language and the info offered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States.
At the second, the police haven’t wished to offer particulars on the hacking technique adopted by Lazarus and Andariel, to keep away from potential imitation assaults.
Upbit is a crypto-exchange from South Korea that in 2019 had suffered a theft of 342,000 ETH. At that point, ETH was value solely 147 {dollars}, and the complete quantity stolen from the crypto-exchange was equal to 50 million {dollars}.
Today, the state of affairs is totally different. The 342,000 ETH in the palms of Lazarus and Andariel now exceed a billion {dollars}.
Upbit: formally revealed Lazarus and Andariel as answerable for the 2019 crypto hack
After 5 years of investigations, it has been revealed right now that the North Korean group Lazarus can also be answerable for the theft of ETH from the South Korean crypto-exchange Upbit in 2019.
From what has emerged, it appears that evidently after the breach, the hackers offered about 57% of the stolen quantity on exchanges presumably managed by North Koreans. The remaining funds had been distributed and laundered by 51 overseas exchanges.
As anticipated, the police of South Korea additionally made use of the info obtained from the FBI of the USA.
In this regard, in August 2023, the FBI had recognized the North Korean Bitcoin hackers, stating that they had been making an attempt to money in from the sale of stolen BTC, over 40 million {dollars}.
In that case, there was discuss of each Lazarus Group and APT38, who are the important hackers of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), as answerable for numerous crypto thefts.
Here is the message from the FBI relating to these topics, which was addressed to crypto corporations to warn them given the outcomes of their investigations.
Chainalysis and the battle in opposition to crime on blockchain
Last May, Chainalysis had talked about the battle in opposition to crime on blockchain at its occasion “Links NYC 2024”.
In the particular case of the North Korean hacking unit Lazarus Group and different linked subgroups, Chainalysis estimated thefts of about 1 billion {dollars} from DeFi protocols from 2022 to that second.
Chainalysis has outlined Lazarus Group as the most ruthless hacking entity, in addition to the most “skilled” in the world, with attainable help from the North Korean authorities.
The greatest theft by Lazarus was the one in opposition to the crypto online game Axie Infinity and the Ronin sidechain in March 2022, amounting to 600 million {dollars} at the moment.
