Hackers Launder Most of Bybit's Stolen Crypto Worth $1.4 Billion

Hackers Launder Most of Bybit's Stolen Crypto Worth $1.4 Billion

The hackers who stole around $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency from crypto exchange Bybit have moved nearly all of the robbed proceeds and converted them into Bitcoin, in what experts call the first phase of the money-laundering operation.

On February 21, Bybit said that a “sophisticated attack” on one of the company’s wallets resulted in the theft of 401,346 Ethereum, worth around $1.4 billion at the time, in what is the largest crypto theft in history and possibly the largest heist of any kind ever.

Blockchain monitoring firms and researchers, as well as the FBI, have accused the North Korean government of being behind the hack.

Since the digital robbery, the hackers have moved all the Ethereum they stole out of the dozens of crypto wallets they originally split the proceeds between and have converted most of the funds to Bitcoin, according to Tom Robinson, the co-founder and chief scientist of crypto monitoring firm Elliptic; and Ari Redbord, a former federal prosecutor and senior Treasury official who is now global head of policy at TRM Labs, also a blockchain monitoring firm.

Andrew Fierman, the head of national security intelligence at blockchain monitoring firm Chainalysis, told TechCrunch that the company is tracking around 90% of the stolen Bybit funds, “the majority of which have been converted to [Bitcoin] and are being held in ~4,400 addresses.”

“The remaining ~10% of stolen funds have been lost to fees/freezes/off-ramped,” the company said.

Off-ramps are services that turn crypto into cash. During this first phase between February 24 and March 2, the North Korean hackers took steps to obscure the origins of the stolen cryptocurrency.

According to Redbord, the hackers did this by mostly relying on THORSwap, a decentralized protocol that enables users to swap assets across different blockchains “without the need for an intermediary.”

As of this writing, Bybit has awarded only $4.3 million to 19 bounty hunters, according to the official page of the bounty.