Cybersecurity experts link North Korean hackers to $1.4bn crypto heist   

North Korean hackers have been linked with stealing approximately $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum, about 400,000 coins, from the cryptocurrency exchange ByBit.

Moments after the breach considered to be the biggest crypto heist yet, the company’s CEO Ben Zhou said on Monday that ByBit was able to raise new funding to fill the gap caused by the rip-off.

Although security experts claim that 10% of the stolen cash has already been laundered and is probably nonreturnable, reports state that the corporation is giving a 10% reward for any money that is returned.

READ ALSO: Ukrainian hackers claim responsibility for destroying Russian ISP that wiped out servers, caused internet outages

Researchers were fast to pinpoint North Korea’s state-sponsored hacking operation Lazarus as the culprit behind this most recent robbery since cryptocurrency transactions are documented on a public blockchain.

In recent years, Lazarus has been implicated in numerous more cryptocurrency thefts, most notably the hack that stole $625 million from the cryptocurrency game company Axie Infinity.

According to a statement from Tom Robinson, co-founder of blockchain monitoring company Elliptic, researchers discovered that a large portion of the money taken from Bybit was “being commingled with funds from multiple DPRK-attributed thefts.”

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