Lazarus Group, a North Korean criminal hacker organization, has transferred $63.5 million of the cryptocurrency assets it obtained from the Harmony Bridge attack last year. Moreover, the outfit keeps developing new strategies to exploit and plunder the open DeFi sector.
Online rumors claim that the hacker group sent the money using Railgun, a privacy site, before putting the disguised monies on three other exchanges.
The 41,000 ETH transfer that happened on January 13 is linked to more than 350,000 addresses. This amount pales compared to the group’s overall theft revenue, which will total roughly $620 million in 2022 alone.
The organization was also in charge of the infamous Ronin Bridge hack, which resulted in the theft of an astounding $600 million. Governments and crypto platforms are now paying considerably more attention to security as a result of such instances, especially when it comes to crypto bridges.
Bridge attacks have been a very popular attack technique, accounting for nine occurrences and more than one-third of the lost value. This year saw an all-time high of $3.9 billion in lost value due to hacks, vulnerabilities, and frauds.
Given how new the concept is, it is astounding how frequently bridges are exploited. According to Chainalysis data, over 70% of all crypto-related attacks in 2022 have been linked to bridge heists.
A 2022 Web3 security study published by blockchain security company CertiK provides some insight into the security-related events of 2022. It was mentioned that the value lost from the Web3 protocol last year was the worst on record.