BlocksInform
Late yesterday evening, the attackers behind Harmony's feat in June 2022 tried to cash in another batch of their dishonest EPF winnings.
Following the 41k ETH laundered via TornadoCash and Railgun two weeks ago, worth about 63.5 million at the time, the North Korean Lazarus Group made an attempt at laundering another $27.7 million worth of ETH.
Picked up by the stock market.
But it was not as successful as the previous one. Almost everything laundered two weeks ago has been cashed through nameless trading. This time they could have frozen most of the funds.
It comes down to trade sharing exactly how many of the 17,278 in EPF have been frozen.
Blockchain security researcher ZachXBT has sounded the alarm originally on Twitter, displaying proof of $17.7 million in travel across both blending tools and on exchanges.
Who is a nurse who is active?
The DPRK has just laundered another $17.7 million (11,304 EPF) of the Harmony Bridge piracy.
N/A to the scholarships that responded quickly over the weekend to allow funds to be frozen. pic.twitter.com/sUyUScHR4N
— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) January 29, 2023
The original tweet was tracked when Zach found another address carrying $10 million in EFT, bringing the total number of addresses used before consolidation to 10.
Statement of Funds Imprecise.
The previous round of laundering saw a good portion of the Harmony funds turned into BTC, with an undisclosed amount frozen and seized by the FBI.
"By the inquiry.", we have confirmed that the Lazarus group [...] is responsible for the theft of 100 million dollars of virtual currency from the Harmony Horizon bridge reported on June 24, 2022. […] (That's what we're going to do) continue to identify and disrupt North Korea's virtual currency theft and laundering in support of North Korea's ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs."
The percentage of funds frozen by crypto exchange security teams appears to be a lot higher this time. We have no idea what's going to happen to them yet. They may be restored in an attempt to make the users whole.
However, It's a lot more likely that the stolen funds will go to the FBI first, could help their security researchers glean more information about North Korea's infamous cybercrime syndicate.
The news about the intercept was well received by the crypto community, with a lot of praise at the same time Zach and the anonymous security teams to monitor during the small hours of a weekend night.
