The U.S. has seized more than $30 million in crypto that North Korean-linked hackers allegedly stole, a blog post from crypto intelligence firm Chainalysis said, adding that Chainalysis had helped recover some of the funds.
The hackers, linked to North Korea and the hacking firm Lazarus, reportedly stole the funds from the popular online game Axie Infinity.
Chainalysis says it used “advanced tracing techniques” to follow the stolen funds to cash -out points and help law enforcement freeze them.
The seizures were around 10% of the total funds stolen in March from Ronin Network, which was a sidechain built for the game. In March, Ronin said the hackers had stolen around $615 million in cryptocurrency overall.
“We estimate that so far in 2022, North Korea-linked groups have stolen approximately $1 billion of cryptocurrency from DeFi protocols,” Chainalysis said.
It also comes as Reuters wrote that the U.S. Department of Treasury has already sanctioned Blender, a virtual currency mixer, in May, saying it had been used in the laundering process for the attack.
In April, PYMNTS wrote about the Lazarus hack, saying that Ronin Network is a cross-chain payments bridge protocol that lets users of the Axie Infinity game swap their crypto for one needed in the game and then reclaim it to avoid exchange transaction fees.
Read more: North Korea Hack Nets $625M on Heels of Crypto Developer Sentencing
The Ronin Network, along with other similar projects, has been hit hard this year — almost all of the $1.3 billion stolen by hackers in the first quarter this year came from DeFi, per Chainalysis data.
Lazarus was also said to have been funding the North Korean nuclear weapons program with the money from the thefts.
And the vast majority of the funds stolen from Ronin users in the big hack were Ethereum’s ether, which was also the token developed by ex-Ethereum Foundation developer Virgil Griffith before he violated the International Emergency Economic Powers Act by traveling to North Korea and flouting the sanctions.
At an April 12 sentencing, Griffin told a judge he had been “cured of my stubborn arrogance, and my obsession with North Korea.”
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