Lazarus Group Loses $4.96 Million in Blacklisted Crypto: Investigation Reveals North Korean Hackers' Setback
The notorious North Korean hacker collective, Lazarus Group, recently experienced a significant setback, losing $4.96 million when two of their addresses were blacklisted by stablecoin providers. This discovery emerged from an extensive investigation led by the well-known on-chain researcher ZachXBT, who collaborated with Metamask, Binance, TRM Labs, and Five I’s LLC. Lazarus Group, associated with North Korean authorities, had laundered over $200 million through 25 blockchain exploits in the past three years.
Thanks to these collaborative efforts, stablecoin issuers such as Tether (USDT), Circle (USDC), Techteryx (TUSD), and Paxos (BUSD) successfully froze the hackers' wallets. However, $720,000 in DAI and $313,000 in Ethereum, which couldn’t be frozen, remain connected to the group. Additionally, $1.65 million of Lazarus Group's funds were frozen on various exchanges. Notably, Circle (USDC) faced criticism for its delayed response, taking 4.5 months to act despite having around 1,000 employees and no dedicated hack response team.
