Bybit: 89% of stolen $1.4B crypto still traceable post-hack

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The lion’s stock of the hacked Bybit funds is inactive traceable aft the historical cybertheft, arsenic blockchain investigators proceed their efforts to frost and retrieve these funds.

The crypto manufacture was rocked by the largest hack successful history connected Feb. 21, erstwhile Bybit lost implicit $1.4 billion successful liquid-staked Ether (stETH), Mantle Staked ETH (mETH) and different integer assets.

Blockchain information firms, including Arkham Intelligence, have identified North Korea’s Lazarus Group arsenic the apt culprit down the Bybit exploit, arsenic the attackers person continued swapping the funds successful an effort to marque them untraceable.

Despite the Lazarus Group’s efforts, implicit 88% of the stolen $1.4 cardinal remains traceable, according to Ben Zhou, the co-founder and CEO of Bybit exchange.

The CEO wrote successful a March 20 X post:

“Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn astir 500k ETH. 88.87% stay traceable, 7.59% person gone dark, 3.54% person been frozen.”

“86.29% (440,091 ETH, ~$1.23B) person been converted into 12,836 BTC crossed 9,117 wallets (Average 1.41 BTC each),” said the CEO, adding that the funds were chiefly funneled done Bitcoin (BTC) mixers including Wasbi, CryptoMixer, Railgun and Tornado Cash.

The CEO’s update comes astir a period aft the speech was hacked. It took the Lazarus Group 10 days to launder 100% of the stolen Bybit funds done the decentralized crosschain protocol THORChain, Cointelegraph reported connected March 4.

Still, blockchain information experts are hopeful that a information of these funds tin beryllium frozen and recovered by Bybit.

Bybit paid $2.2M for Lazarus “bounty hunters”

The crypto manufacture needs much blockchain “bounty hunters” and achromatic hat, oregon ethical hackers, to combat the increasing illicit enactment from North Korean actors.

Decoding transaction patterns done cryptocurrency mixers remains the biggest situation successful tracing these funds, Bybit’s CEO wrote, adding:

“In the past 30 days, 5012 bounty reports were received of which 63 were valid bounty reports. We invited much reports, we request much bounty hunters that tin decode mixers arsenic we request a batch of assistance determination down the road.”

Bybit has awarded implicit $2.2 cardinal worthy of funds to 12 bounty hunters for applicable accusation that whitethorn pb to the freezing of the funds. The speech is offering 10% of the recovered funds arsenic a bounty for achromatic chapeau hackers and investigators.

The Bybit onslaught highlights that adjacent centralized exchanges with beardown information measures stay vulnerable to blase cyberattacks, analysts say.

“This incidental is different stark reminder that adjacent the strongest information measures tin beryllium undone by quality error,” Lucien Bourdon, an expert astatine Trezor, told Cointelegraph.

Bourdon explained that attackers utilized a blase societal engineering technique, deceiving signers into approving a malicious transaction that drained crypto from 1 of Bybit's acold wallets.

The Bybit hack is much than doubly the size of the $600 cardinal Poly Network hack successful August 2021, making it the largest crypto speech breach to date.