Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, reported the recovery of $5.8 million worth of stolen funds from the unprecedented Axie Infinity exploit that happened last month. Axie Infinity is the project behind the metaverse coin AXS. Here are the details…
Developments in the Metaverse coin exploit, relayed by CZ
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said in a tweet Friday that the hacked funds were distributed to around 86 accounts. “The DPRK hacking group started moving stolen funds from Axie Infinity today. Some of them moved to Binance and spread to more than 86 accounts. “$5.8 million was recovered,” he said. As we reported as Kriptokoin.com, the $ 625 million exploit, one of the largest in the crypto industry, was linked to North Korea’s “Lazarus” hacker group by US security officials.
Ronin Network, creators of the Axie Infinity bridge and affected by the attack, a blog In his article, he said the FBI linked Lazarus to the validator breach and that the Treasury Department had sanctioned the funds. Hackers had previously used the privacy tool Tornado Cash to convert stolen funds into Ethereum (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies. Tornado increases the confidentiality of transactions by breaking the on-chain connection between a source and a destination address. This allows exploiters and hackers to hide their addresses while withdrawing illegally earned funds.
Hacker costs $285M
Last week’s activity at the hacker/hackers home address shows that several thousand Ethereum (ETH) has been moved over the past few days. The wallet continues to hold $285 million worth of assets at the time of writing. The wallet is labeled “Ronin Bridge Exploiter” on the tracking service Etherscan. Ronin Network was hit by a $625 million vulnerability in March that affected Ronin validator nodes from Sky Mavis, publisher of the popular Axie Infinity game, and Axie DAO.
Ronin makes software that allows the player to transfer digital assets from the game to different Blockchains. In a blog post on Substack, Ronin said that as seen on Etherscan, the attacker “used private keys” to withdraw counterfeit money from the Ronin bridge in two transactions.
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