The FBI on Monday said it observed North Korean cyber actors using a privacy protocol to launder over $60 million worth of Ethereum that was stolen in a June 2022 theft of the Harmony Horizon cryptocurrency bridge.
On Jan. 13, the law enforcement agency said its investigation confirmed that the state-sponsored Lazarus Group used the Railgun privacy protocol to launder part of the nearly $100 million in cryptocurrency that is believed to have been stolen in a June 2022 heist of the Harmony blockchain bridge.
In a Jan. 23 press release, the FBI said it was able to freeze a portion of the funds that was converted to Bitcoin in coordination with virtual asset service providers and identified 11 addresses where the remaining cryptocurrency was moved.
The FBI said that its Los Angeles and Charlotte field offices, coordinating with other federal agencies, “continue to identify and disrupt North Korea’s theft and laundering of virtual currency, which is used to support North Korea’s ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.”
The theft from the Harmony bridge was among the top crypto hacks of 2022.
