Security News > 2022 > September > U.S. Seizes Cryptocurrency Worth $30 Million Stolen by North Korean Hackers

More than $30 million worth of cryptocurrency plundered by the North Korea-linked Lazarus Group from online video game Axie Infinity has been recovered, marking the first time digital assets stolen by the threat actor have been seized.

"The seizures represent approximately 10% of the total funds stolen from Axie Infinity, and demonstrate that it is becoming more difficult for bad actors to successfully cash out their ill-gotten crypto gains," Erin Plante, senior director of investigations at Chainalysis, said.

The development arrives more than five months after the crypto hack resulted in the theft of $620 million from the decentralized finance platform Ronin Network, with the attackers laundering a majority of the proceeds - amounting to $455 million - through the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency tumbler Tornado Cash.

The March 2022 cryptocurrency heist resulted in losses totaling 173,600 ETH worth about $594 million at the time and $25.5 million in USDC stablecoin, making it the biggest cryptocurrency theft to date.

Although Tornado Cash has emerged as a popular tool for anonymizing virtual currency transactions, its abuse by malicious actors such as the Lazarus Group to cash out the illicitly obtained assets has landed it in the crosshairs of the U.S. government, which imposed sanctions against the service last month.

"The hacker bridged ETH from the Ethereum blockchain to the BNB chain and then swapped that ETH for USDD, which was then bridged to the BitTorrent chain," Plante said, detailing the switch between several different kinds of cryptocurrencies in a single transaction to launder the stolen funds.

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