IN THE latest development of the crypto heist that made off with more than P28 billion in cryptocurrency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has attributed the hack to “North Korea-based Lazarus Group,” announced Axie Infinity developers Sky Mavis earlier today.
“The US Government, specifically the Treasury Department, has sanctioned the address that received the stolen funds,” continued the developers in the newsletter for Ronin, the sidechain that powers Axie Infinity transactions.
Cyber security group Symantec says that Lazarus has been active since at least 2009, and was involved in a $81 million heist of Bangladesh’s central bank in 2016, and the 2014 hack that targeted Sony Pictures.
A spokesperson for the US Treasury Department told CoinDesk that the sanctions “demonstrates Treasury’s commitment to use all available authorities to disrupt malicious cyber actors and block ill-gotten criminal proceeds.”
Sky Mavis expects additional security measures for Ronin to be online by the end of the month, and will likely reopen it by then.
Recapping Axie Infinity hack
On March 23, the Vietnam-based studio announced that Ronin had been drained of 173,600 Ethereum and 25,500,000 USDC — roughly equivalent, according to many reports, to $600 million.
It blamed the robbery (called the biggest crypto hack in history) on a takeover of its validator nodes that check every transaction made on its blockchain.
In early April, Sky Mavis announced that it had kicked off a $150 million funding round to reimburse funds lost by the hack.
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