US law enforcement in a cooperation with crypto firms and Chainalysis recovered over $30 million worth of cryptocurrency out of $600 million stolen by North Korean-linked hackers. The New York-based company wrote in a blog post that this was the first time ever that cryptocurrency stolen by a North Korean hacking group had been seized.
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Chainalysis CEO, Michael Gronager, said that the blockchain forensic firm traced the stolen funds to cash out points. He added that the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Tornado Cash, North Korean hackers (Lazarus Group) tried to obfuscate the source of funds with the help of cross-chain bridges:
"With Chainalysis tools these cross chain funds movements are easily traced."
According to data provided by Chainalysis, the attackers swapped stolen altcoins from Axie Infinity for bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH). Later, the hackers tried to launder ETH by switching from the Ethereum network to BNB Chain (Binance Smart Chain) and even BitTorrent Chain.
As iHodl earlier reported, the US Treasury linked North Korean hackers known as Lazarus Group to a crypto address that was part of a massive $600+ million hack of Axie Infinity, a blockchain game made by Sky Mavis.
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