A $100 million cryptocurrency heist was committed by the Lazarus Group last June, which has been blamed by the FBI for the crime. Known for stealing cryptocurrency to help support the military and weapons programs of the North Korean government, this team is associated with the North Korean government.
A statement released by the FBI on Tuesday identified Lazarus Group, which is also known as APT38, as the perpetrators of the June 24 attack on the Harmony Horizon bridge. The FBI released this information. In the course of this attack, $100 million worth of Ethereum was lost. Harmony Horizon is a bridge that allows you to connect Ethereum, Bitcoin, Binance Chain, and Harmony with the aforementioned cryptocurrency systems. The Ethereum bridge was accessed by attackers in June of this year and the cryptocurrency was stolen.
There has been a reported theft on the Horizon bridge this morning for approximately $100MM, which was discovered by the Harmony team. At the time of the incident, Harmony said that they had begun to work with national authorities and forensic specialists to identify the perpetrator. In addition, they had begun to regain the funds that had been stolen.
As a team, the FBI and the Department of Justice's National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team have combined to investigate the Harmony heist, as well as several United States attorneys' offices. Earlier this week, the FBI announced that the Lazarus Group had been responsible for the attack and used its malware tool TraderTraitor as part of its operation. This malware was one of the components of the attack.
"During the June 2022 heist, North Korean cyber actors, who used an encryption protocol known as Railgun, a privacy protocol, gained access to over $60 million worth of Ethereum (ETH) that had been stolen. It is believed that a portion of the stolen Ethereum from this theft was sent to several virtual asset services for conversion into bitcoin (BTC)," the FBI said in a statement released by the bureau.
Lazarus Group is a North Korean security firm that has been active for several years. It is closely associated with the North Korean government and typically pursues the interests of the government. A successful attack by this group on the Bank of Bangladesh in 2016 netted it $81 million. Since then, Lazarus has continued to operate against banks and crypto exchanges to fund its operations.
Lazarus Group is a group of companies that specialize in penetrating cryptocurrency firms and exchanges, as well as other targets. This is done with the use of their tools that are integrated into TraderTraitor. Oftentimes, these tactics begin when hackers send phishing emails to employees at a target company. They entice them to download malicious files in the hopes that they will be able to decipher what they are downloading.
Many of these messages are disguised as recruitment efforts and offer high-paying jobs to entice recipients to download cryptocurrency applications laced with malware, also known as TraderTraitor by the U.S. government, according to a CISA advisory released in April.
TraderTraitor is the term used to describe a series of malicious applications that are written using cross-platform JavaScript and run on the Node.js runtime running on Electron using the Node.js runtime environment. Several malicious open-source applications have been downloaded into the system, posing as tools that can help traders or price forecasters trade cryptocurrencies. TraderTraitor campaigns promote the alleged features of the applications on websites with modern designs.
Several intrusions carried out by the Lazarus Group have used TraderTraitor as part of their investigations, and they have been quite successful in doing so. There was also another tool they used, a macOS backdoor called AppleJeus, which they implemented along with more advanced ways.
In addition to spreading cryptocurrency trading applications modified to contain malware that facilitates cryptocurrency theft, the Lazarus Group also distributed AppleJeus trojanized cryptocurrency applications targeting individuals and companies, including cryptocurrency exchanges and financial services firms.
According to the advisory, the North Korean regime will likely continue to exploit the vulnerabilities of cryptocurrency technology companies, gaming companies, and exchanges. This will enable it to generate and launder funds to support its regime.
During the Harmony intrusion, the Lazarus Group moved bitcoin to several exchanges, which the FBI worked with to freeze those assets.