Ben Zhou, Managing Director of Bybit, at the Token2049 conference in Singapore, Thursday, September 14, 2023.
Joseph Nair | Bloomberg | Getty images
Bybit, a great exchange of cryptocurrency, was hacked up to $ 1.5 billion in digital active ingredients, in what is estimated to be the greatest cryptographic robbery in history.
The attack compromised the cold wallet of Bebit, an offline storage system designed for safety. Stolen funds, mainly in etherwere quickly transferred to several wallets and liquidated via various platforms.
“Please rest assured that all the other cold wallets are secure”, well Zhou, CEO of Bybit, published on X. “All withdrawals are normal.”
Blockchain analysis companies, including Elliptic and Arkham Intelligence, traced the stolen crypto because it was moved to various accounts and quickly discharged. The hack far exceeds previous flights in the sector, According to elliptical. This includes the $ 611 million stolen from the Poly Network in 2021 and the value of $ 570 million from Bnb token Bnance stolen in 2022.
Elliptic analysts then linked the attack to the Lazarus group in North Korea, a collective of hacking sponsored by the notorious state to siphon dollars in the cryptocurrency industry. The group is known to exploit security vulnerabilities to finance the North Korea regime, often using sophisticated money laundering methods to hide the flow of funds.
“We have labeled the thief’s addresses in our software, to help prevent these funds from being cashed through any other exchange,” said Tom Robinson, chief scientist at Elliptic, in an e-mail.
The violation immediately sparked a withdrawal of withdrawals from the use because users feared potential insolvency. Zhou said the outings had stabilized. To reassure customers, he announced that Bybit had obtained a loan from bridges of unknown partners to cover unrealizable losses and maintain operations.
The history of the Lazare group to target cryptographic platforms dates back to 2017, when the group infiltrated four South Korean exchanges and stole 200 million dollars in Bitcoin. While law enforcement organizations and cryptography monitoring companies are trying to retrace stolen assets, industry experts warn that large -scale flights remain a fundamental risk.
“The more we are difficult to benefit from crimes like this, the less they will take place,” said Robinson d’Elliptic written in a post.
Fixed: an earlier version of this story had an incorrect fact on an anterior hack.
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