Bybit Launches ‘War’ Against North Korean Hacking Group Lazarus Following $1.46 Billion Theft

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Bybit is taking aggressive measures to recover all of the funds stolen in the recent hack that resulted in a loss of $1.46 billion from the exchange. The Bybit CEO declared a war against the North Korean hacking group Lazarus, responsible for the largest cryptocurrency heist to date. To facilitate this, the Bybit team has developed a bounty website to track down the stolen funds, offering a 5% reward upfront.

We will Not Stop: Bybit CEO

Ben Zhou, CEO of Bybit, which recently suffered potentially the largest single-day exploit in history, is expanding its bounty program in an effort to reclaim funds from the Lazarus Group, a hacking group sponsored by North Korea.

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Zhou announced on X that v1 of the website, lazarusbounty.com, allows individuals to link their wallets and become “bounty hunters.” The site features a live ranking of both “good” and “bad” actors, along with their response times to handling transactions associated with the sanctioned Lazarus group.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou has rallied users to join the fight against the Lazarus Group, responsible for stealing $1.5 billion from the exchange on February 21. Zhou introduced a bounty website where participants who successfully freeze illicitly transferred funds can earn a reward. Initially, helpers can receive 5% of the recovered crypto for their efforts. The payments will be “upfront upon instantly at freezing.”

Moreover, the website states that exceptionally effective interventions will be compensated with a 10% bounty, which could amount to as much as $140 million.

The CEO said, “We have assigned a team to dedicate to maintain and update this website, we will not stop until Lazarus or bad actors in the industry is eliminated. In the future we will open it up to other victims of Lazarus as well.”

Security expert ZachXBT pinpointed the Lazarus Group as the perpetrators of the February 21 hack, which saw the extraction of over $1.4 billion in assets. According to the bounty website, Mantle froze nearly $41 million and ZachXBT froze $181K worth of funds.

eXch Denied to Recover $94 Million

According to analytics firm Elliptic, the Lazarus Group has progressed to what is known as the “second stage of laundering.” This stage involves “layering” where the stolen funds are shifted across various platforms, including major blockchains like Bitcoin and anonymizing services such as eXch, which has rebutted claims of facilitating the laundering on its non-KYC platform.

Also read: Bybit Claims 100% Recovery of $1.46B Crypto Hack in Just Two Days – But Here’s the Truth

In response to the breach, Bybit has effectively managed to replenish its Ethereum reserves, ensuring their client assets are fully restored to a “100% 1:1” ratio.

From 2017 to 2023, North Korean-linked hackers reportedly stole over $3 billion from crypto exchanges. The breach at Bybit, however, is poised to become the costliest in cryptocurrency history, significantly surpassing the $625 million theft at Ronin Bridge in 2022.