The Federal Bureau of Investigation announced Monday that the Lazarus Group and APT38 were responsible for losing $100 million from the United States crypto company Harmony’s Horizon bridge in June last year. The heist occurred in June.
The FBI said in a statement that the groups laundered more than $60 million worth of Ethereum seized during the crime in June using a privacy protocol called Railgun on January 13.
According to the FBI, some of the stolen Ethereum was afterward transferred to several virtual asset providers to be converted into bitcoin.
According to the FBI, North Korea is stealing and laundering virtual money to fund its ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs through these activities.
In June 2018, the company Harmony, which is situated in California, said that its Horizon bridge had been the target of theft. Horizon bridge is the foundational software that digital tokens like bitcoin and ether use to transfer cryptocurrency from one blockchain to another.
According to a study published by Reuters in June, North Korean hackers were responsible for the attack on Harmony. The report cited findings from three different digital investigative organizations.
Blockchains and non-fungible tokens are two of the products that Harmony creates. Blockchains are used for decentralized finance, which refers to peer-to-peer platforms that offer loans and other services without using traditional gatekeepers like banks.
