SIX MONTHS after a stunning cyber heist that made off with about $300 million (around P17 billion) worth of cryptocurrency, Axie Infinity has recovered about 10 percent of the stolen funds.
In a September 8 blog post, Erin Plante, senior director of investigations at crypto firm Chainalysis, wrote: “[T]oday I had the privilege of joining the Axie Infinity team on stage at AxieCon to deliver some good news: With the help of law enforcement and leading organizations in the cryptocurrency industry, more than $30 million worth of cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean-linked hackers has been seized.”
The cryptocurrency theft — which was carried out on the Ronin sidechain built for the blockchain-based game — happened after hackers (now believed to be part of the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime operation that is sponsored by North Korea) got access to transaction validator keys for Ronin. They used this access to make two massive withdrawals of cryptocurrency.
How agencies recovered $30 million in stolen Axie Infinity funds
Plante detailed how Chainalysis’ incident response team traced the “highly sophisticated” methods the hackers used to launder the stolen crypto.
But their swift investigation would not have been possible, said Plante, without the “transparency” that is inherent in cryptocurrency.
“Investigators with the right tools can follow the money to understand and disrupt a cybercrime organization’s laundering activities,” he said. “This would never be possible in traditional financial channels, where money laundering usually involves networks of shell companies and financial institutions in jurisdictions that may not cooperate.”
Plante claims that the remaining funds are still stashed away in cryptocurrency wallets that are under the hackers’ control.
Still, he heralded the good news as a sign that “it is becoming more difficult for bad actors to successfully cash out their ill-gotten crypto gains.”
AxieCon is a currently ongoing event in Barcelona, Spain. The event touts itself as “ a gathering of the greatest thinkers, builders, and battlers in the Axie ecosystem.”
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