North Korea’s Lazarus Group Was Behind $540 Million Ronin Theft
On March 29th, the Ronin Network announced that 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coins had been stolen from the Ronin cross-chain bridge six days earlier. The total value of the stolen cryptoassets at the time of the theft was $540 million. This is the second largest crypto theft of all time.
On April 14th, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced new sanctions against the thief's Ethereum address and listed the owner of this address as Lazarus Group – the North Korean state hacking group. The sanctions prohibit US persons and entities from transacting with this address to ensure the state-sponsored group can’t cash out any further funds they continue to hold onto through US-based crypto exchanges.
The incident occurred six days before the exploit was announced by Ronin. Amid confusion over the delayed response, it announced that the exploit was only discovered after a 5,000 ETH withdrawal attempt from one of their users failed. At the time of discovery, the stolen funds were worth over $615 million.
