FBI Confirms Lazarus Group Was Behind $100m Harmony Hack

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has verified that North Korea’s Lazarus Team and APT28 were being powering the $100m theft from cryptocurrency organization Harmony discovered in June 2022.

Producing in its formal website on Monday, the Bureau mentioned it spotted the North Korean cyber actors employing the privacy protocol Railgun to launder over $60m value of Ethereum (ETH) stolen through the heist.

“A part of this stolen Ethereum was subsequently sent to several digital asset support vendors and converted to bitcoin (BTC),” reads the put up.

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The FBI also claimed that when some of these money ended up frozen (in coordination with some digital asset service vendors), the remaining Bitcoin finally moved to 11 identified addresses.

“FBI Los Angeles and FBI Charlotte […] proceed to recognize and disrupt North Korea’s theft and laundering of digital currency, which is applied to guidance North Korea’s ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction courses,” the Bureau wrote.

In accordance to Kevin Bocek, VP of security method and risk intelligence at Venafi, Lazarus is identified for thieving cryptocurrency by exploiting machine identities, so the attribution of the Harmony attack is not astonishing.

“When disclosing the breach, Harmony supplied proof that its non-public keys – a core ingredient of machine identity – had been compromised, opening the doorway to Lazarus and enabling it to decrypt knowledge and siphon off resources. This displays the electricity of device identities falling into the completely wrong arms.”

More, Bocek described that Venafi’s exploration confirmed that attacks from North Korean menace teams are often financial.

“Cybercrime has develop into an vital cog in the survival of Kim’s dictatorship, enabling North Korea to evade worldwide sanctions and fund its weapons programs,” the security expert added.

“Any enterprise that features a financial get to North Korean threat teams could be a focus on, especially in the somewhat unregulated cryptocurrency industry.”

The actuality that the Lazarus Team may possibly be powering the $100m Harmony hack was 1st recommended by blockchain analytics business Elliptic times right after the breach was discovered.

Extra a short while ago, the menace actors have been involved with the exploitation of a Dell driver vulnerability and a collection of macOS malware infections.