North Korea Used Tornado Cash To Siphon HTX’s $147.5 mn Loot
North Korean cyberattackers, known as the Lazarus Group, used Tornado Cash, a privacy protocol, to launder nearly $150 million in stolen cryptocurrency assets in March 2023. The Lazarus Group moved a dormant bag of stolen assets back to their home base in North Korea. In March 2023, the hackers unlawfully extracted $147.5 million worth of cryptocurrencies from HTX, a crypto exchange owned by Tron founder Justin Sun.
A year later, the funds were siphoned into North Korea using Tornado Cash. The UN is currently investigating 97 North Korean cyberattacks that drained roughly $3.6 billion worth of cryptocurrencies between 2017 and 2024. In 2024, the UN monitored 11 cryptocurrency thefts valued at $54.7 million, alleging linked to DPRK IT workers inadvertently hired by small crypto-related companies. Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev was found guilty of money laundering, raising potential implications for open-source code developers.
(With inputs from Shikha Singh)
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