In an alert issued on Tuesday, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has warned crypto companies about the possibility that Lazarus Group, a hacker group allegedly backed by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, is going to sell a large amount of stolen Bitcoin worth tens of millions of dollars.
North Korea-based Lazarus Corporation and APT38 are believed to be behind a series of crypto hacks earlier this year, including the $60 million from Alphapo and $100 million from Atomic Wallet. The FBI said they have been tracking over the past 24 hours and discovered that 6 wallet addresses connected to these hacker groups are holding up to 1,580 Bitcoins worth more than $40 million.
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Through the alert, FBI wants to send a warning to crypto organizations and companies against interacting with these wallets. The FBI also insists it will continue to expose North Korea’s use of illicit activities, including cybercrime and virtual currency theft to generate revenue for the regime.
Lazarus Group is a notorious hacker group of North Korea. It was once accused by US authorities of being behind the attack on Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge that caused $624 million in damage – the largest hack in history of the crypto industry.
Although the crypto market saw fewer hacks in 2023, the amount of lost assets is still a large number. In the first 6 months of 2023, there were 386 DeFi attacks with a total loss of $479 million. The US government also sold a large amount of Bitcoin in March 2023 – 9,800 BTC. This news once had a big impact on the crypto market as the US government is holding more than 207,000 BTC (equivalent to $5.5 billion) seized from criminal allegations. This is by far the largest amount of BTC owned by a single country.