Key Points:
- Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking collective, holds $47 million in cryptocurrency, primarily in Bitcoin.
- Recent data from Dune Analytics reveals the group’s diminishing crypto holdings since a high of $86 million.
- Despite their significant crypto wealth, the Lazarus Group avoids privacy coins, making their activities more traceable.
Newly released data reveals that the Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking collective, has amassed a substantial sum of over $47 million in various cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin being the predominant holding.
According to information compiled on Dune Analytics, provided by 21.co (the parent company of 21Shares), wallets connected to the Lazarus Group presently contain approximately $47 million in digital assets. This includes a hefty $42.5 million in Bitcoin, approximately $1.9 million in Ether (ETH), about $1.1 million in Binance Coin (BNB), and an additional $640,000 in stablecoins, primarily denominated in Binance USD (BUSD).
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It’s worth noting that this crypto hoard appears to have diminished since the reported $86 million held by the group on September 6, shortly after their involvement in the Stake.com hack.
The Dune dashboard monitors 295 wallets identified by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as belonging to this hacking group.
Interestingly, despite their sizable crypto holdings, the Lazarus Group does not possess any privacy-oriented coins such as Monero (XMR), Dash, or Zcash (ZEC), which are renowned for their enhanced anonymity features.
On September 13, Cointelegraph reported that the Lazarus Group executed an attack on the cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx, resulting in a loss of at least $55 million for the platform.
Additionally, the FBI has attributed the Lazarus Group to various hacks, including those on Alphapo, CoinsPaid, and Atomic Wallet, collectively amounting to over $200 million in stolen funds in 2023.
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However, it’s worth noting that according to Chainalysis, crypto thefts conducted by North Korea-linked hackers have decreased significantly, with an 80% decline from the previous year. As of mid-September, these groups had stolen a total of $340.4 million in cryptocurrency, down from a record high of $1.65 billion in pilfered digital assets in 2022.
Recently, U.S. federal authorities issued a warning of a “significant risk” of potential attacks by the Lazarus Group on entities within the U.S. healthcare and public health sectors.
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