‼️ The North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group lost access to $4.96 million after two of their addresses were blacklisted by stablecoin issuers. The assets were discovered by renowned on-chain investigator ZachXBT
During a months-long investigation, ZachXBT traced how the organization, linked to North Korean authorities, laundered more than $200 million in fiat and cryptocurrencies over a roughly three-year period. The funds were stolen in 25 exploits across various blockchains.
📌 The expert worked in collaboration with teams from Metamask, Binance, TRM Labs, and Five I's LLC.
✔️ As a result, companies behind stablecoins such as USDT (Tether), USDC (Circle), TUSD (Techteryx), and BUSD (Paxos) froze two of the hackers' wallets.
In addition to nearly $5 million in stablecoins, the addresses also contain $720,000 in DAI and $313,000 worth of Ethereum, which could not be frozen.
Furthermore, $1.65 million of Lazarus Group’s funds were frozen on various exchanges as part of the investigation.
ZachXBT noted that the community often criticizes Tether’s compliance practices. However, the longest delay in freezing (4.5 months) came from Circle. The expert was surprised to find that despite having 1,000 employees, the USDC issuer does not have a dedicated hack response team to protect its ecosystem.
