Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange, has recovered $5.8 million in stolen assets from last month’s extraordinary Axie Infinity hack. North Korean hackers attempted to route the loot through “over 86 accounts” today, per Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.
According to a tweet from Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao early this morning, the exchange has recovered a small portion of the $622 million stolen from Sky Mavis’s Ethereum sidechain Ronin last month. Axie Infinity, a popular play-to-earn crypto game, is developed by Sky Mavis.
Following an FBI tip, the US Treasury put the attacker’s Ethereum wallet on its sanctions list just last week. The wallet, dubbed “Ronin Bridge Exploiter” on Etherscan, was linked to the North Korean hacking gang Lazarus, which the FBI classifies as “state-sponsored.”
Lazarus is behind numerous big attacks, including the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, the Sony Pictures attack in 2014, and a series of cyber raids on pharmaceutical businesses in 2020, notably AstraZeneca, the makers of the COVID-19 vaccine.
As previously reported, the exploiters used the anonymity tool Tornado Cash to transfer stolen cash to ether and other cryptocurrencies.
Several thousand Ether (ETH) were moved in the last few days from the exploiter’s main address, which has been dubbed Ronin Bridge Exploiter on the tracking service Etherscan. At the time of writing, the wallet still has $285 million in the asset.
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