The crypto market has witnessed one of the most significant setbacks as the FBI attributes Lazarus Group for hacking and stealing $625 million. Last year as well, the North Korean hackers stole crypto worth around $400 million. This hacking and theft have questioned the security of the industry.
In March 2022, the group had stolen from the players of Axie Infinity, a famous online game. The cyberattacks were made to exploit the loophole in the setup of the game.
This NFT game lets players gain cryptocurrency through trading, playing games or transacting their avatars. The company had created in-game crypto so that players could make speedy transactions. This made it less secure.
The Blockchain platform behind this game, Ronin, and Axie Infinity operator Sky Mavis accepted that 173600 ETH and 25.5M USDC were stolen in two transactions. It was further stated that the private keys were used for fake withdrawals. This came to light when a user notified that their withdrawal of 5k ETH was unsuccessful.
The company has temporarily halted the activities from the Ronin Bridge so that no more scope of the attack is present.
The theft related to crypto has increased. This year in January, $120 mn worth of crypto was stolen from BadgerDAO. The hackers affected many wallets before the company could take action to stop the illicit activity. Last year, in December, Qubit Finance became the victim and lost $80 mn worth of cryptos.
After the investigation, the FBI mentioned that they had found that the aforementioned North Korean group was found to be involved in this theft. This is the same hacker group that leaked Sony Picture’s confidential data back in the year 2014. They had demanded Sony Pictures withdraw the release of its movie “The Interview” back then as it was perceived to be related to the assassination of Kim Jong-un.
The UN Panel has also accused that to avoid the sanctions, the funds from such thefts are used by the country to support its nuclear programs.
Although crypto has been brought into the mainstream by celebrity endorsement and promising multifold returns, such activities question the security of the industry.
