The FBI has confirmed the Lazarus Group and APT38 as the culprits behind the $100 million Harmony Bridge Hack from June. The North Korea-linked cyber group had long been suspected of being behind the attack but their involvement hadn’t been confirmed by authorities until now.
According to a statement, the FBI noted that through our investigation, we were able to confirm that the Lazarus Group and APT38, cyber actors associated with the DPRK, are responsible for the theft of $100 million of virtual currency from Harmony’s Horizon bridge.
The Harmony Bridge hack in 2022 was the result of security holes in Harmony’s Horizon Ethereum bridge that allowed the cyber attackers to swipe a number of assets stored in the bridge via 11 transactions.
The FBI also outlined that the North Korean hackers started shifting around $60 million worth of the stolen funds earlier this month via the Ethereum-based privacy protocol RAILGUN. Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT previously highlighted this via Twitter on Jan. 16.
Notably, Binance also detected the hackers were trying to launder the funds through the Huobi crypto exchange, and then promptly assisted it in freezing and recovering the digital assets deposited by the hackers, according to CEO Changpeng Zhao.
The Lazarus group is a well-known hacking syndicate that has reportedly been involved in a number of key exploits in the crypto industry, including the $600 million Ronin Bridge hack last March.
