Binance assists in recovering $3M from Harmony bridge hack
North Korea's Lazarus Group moved 41,000 Ethereum (roughly $64 million) from the Harmony Bridge hack over the weekend, according to ZachXBT.
Binance assisted Huobi in recovering 124 Bitcoin (BTC) — worth $2.58 million — from the Harmony bridge hacker, according to Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ).
The hacker previously tried to use Binance to launder the stolen funds, but the account was frozen, according to CZ’s tweet.
The collaboration between the two exchanges also foiled the hacker’s new attempts to use Huobi, as confirmed by Huobi’s advisor Justin Sun.
$64 million on the move
Meanwhile, on-chain sleuth ZachXBT reported on Jan. 16 that North Korea’s Lazarus Group moved 41,000 Ethereum (ETH) — worth $64 million — from the Harmony (ONE) Bridge hack over the weekend.
The funds’ transfer originated in batches of 100 ETH from OFAC-sanctioned Tornado Cash to another privacy platform, Railgun, according to the chart shared by ZachXBT.
ZachXBT said the funds were later consolidated and deposited on three unnamed exchanges.
The movements were first noticed by the crypto compliance platform MistTrack on Jan. 14, tweeting that an address associated with the Harmony bridge exploit was on the move.
Following a $100 million Harmony bridge hack on June 24, 2022, the layer-1 blockchain offered a $1 million bounty for the return of the funds. Blockchain analytical firm Elliptic later traced the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.