How Does Crypto Web 3.0 Help North Korean Lazarus Group Amass $40M in Bitcoin?

Exploring the Crypto Holdings of the Lazarus Group

The Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking collective, has amassed a large amount of cryptocurrency, with a reported $47 million worth of digital assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Binance USD (BUSD) and Binance (BNB).

According to data collated on Dune Analytics from 21.co, the group’s wallets hold $42.5 million in BTC, $1.9 million in ETH, $1.1 million in BNB, and $640,000 in stablecoins, primarily BUSD.

The Dune dashboard tracks 295 wallets identified by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as belonging to the Lazarus Group.

Interestingly, this figure is significantly lower than the $86 million that the group held on Sept. 6, shortly after theStake.com hack, in which Lazarus was implicated.

Lazarus Group Crypto Holdings

Surprisingly, the Lazarus Group does not own any privacy coins such as Monero (XMR), Dash (DASH), or Zcash (ZEC), which are harder to trace.

The group’s wallets are still active, with the most recent transaction happening on September 20. 21.co also noted that the Lazarus Group’s crypto holdings are likely to be higher than what has been reported. “We should note that this is a lower-bound estimation of Lazarus Group’s crypto holdings based on publicly available information,” it stated.

On September 13, Cointelegraph reported that the Lazarus Group was behind the attack on CoinEx, a crypto exchange that lost at least $55 million.

Crypto Thefts by North Korea-Linked Hackers

The FBI has accused Lazarus Group of perpetrating the Alphapo, CoinsPaid and Atomic Wallet hacks in 2023, which resulted in the theft of over $200 million worth of crypto assets.

According to Chainalysis, the amount of digital assets stolen by North Korea-linked hackers has decreased by 80% since 2022. By mid-September, the total amount of crypto stolen by these groups amounted to $340.4 million, a significant decrease from the $1.65 billion stolen in 2022.

Recently, U.S. federal authorities warned of a potential attack on U.S. healthcare and public health sector entities by Lazarus Group, which poses a “significant risk”.