The Lazarus Group, a notorious hacking organization with links to North Korea, has had nearly $5 million worth of stablecoins frozen by major issuers following an extensive investigation led by blockchain analyst ZachXBT. This action was taken after the group realized it had been laundering cryptocurrency funds through different blockchain platforms for the last three years.
ZachXBT, with support from Metamask, Binance, TRM Labs, and Five I’s LLC, found that the Lazarus Group has been embezzling more than $200 million worth of cryptocurrency from 25 hacks. The stolen funds were further swapped for fiat money through most peer-to-peer platforms.
ZachXBT Criticizes Circle for Slow Response in Freezing USDC
Following the investigation outcomes, stablecoins such as USDT (Tether), USDC (Circle), TUSD (Techteryx), and BUSD (Paxos) have frozen approximately $5 million in two wallets belonging to the Lazarus Group. The wallets also contain another 720K DAI and about 313 ETH, which have not been frozen at the moment.
In a new update shared with X (formerly Twitter), ZachXBT revealed that $1.65 million at exchanges is also frozen, which brings the total to $6.98 million. He applauded most stablecoin issuers for their quick response but criticized Circle, which is the issuer of USDC, for being slow. Specifically, ZachXBT pointed out that “it took Circle 4.5 months longer than other issuers to freeze the tokens, while Circle has had a significant staff for a long time.” He further criticized Circle for not having an incident response team that could quickly address the breaches.
This development always emphasizes the fact that protecting digital assets is still a complex issue and severely stresses the importance of quick and proper responses to cyber threats. Freezing these assets would be the next step in countering the Lazarus Group’s operations and protecting the authenticity of the cryptocurrency industry.
