Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON:The Federal Bureau of Investigation has said that two hacker groups associated with North Korea, the Lazarus Group and APT38, were responsible for the theft of 100 million dollars from US crypto firm Harmony’s Horizon bridge last June.
According to Reuters, the FBI said that on January 13, the groups used the privacy protocol called Railgun to launder over 60 million dollars worth Ethereum stolen during the theft in June. FBI said that a portion of the stolen Ethereum was subsequently sent to several virtual asset providers and converted to bitcoin.
The FBI said that North Korea’s theft and laundering of virtual currency is used to support its ballistic missile and Weapons of Mass Destruction programmes.
The previous year, California-based Harmony said that a heist had hit its Horizon bridge, the underlying software used by digital tokens such as bitcoin and ether for transferring crypto between blockchains.
North Korean hackers
Reuters has reported that North Korean hackers were most likely behind the attack on Harmony, citing three digital investigative firms.
Harmony develops blockchains for decentralized finance peer-to-peer sites that offer loans and other services without traditional gatekeepers, such as banks and non-fungible tokens.
