In June, hackers made off with $100 million in crypto assets (opens in new tab) from the Harmony Horizon Bridge; the FBI now says "cyber actors associated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea" were behind the theft.

According to the FBI (open in new tab) (via The Hacker News (open in new tab)), Lazarus Group was involved in the June 24 heist, forcing the company to temporarily suspend trading for at least 24 hours.

Harmony's Horizon Bridge may sound like an Apex Legends map, but it is actually a high-speed It is a high-speed Layer 1 blockchain. Hackers were able to use exploits that allowed them to divert tokens stored from the bridge to their own wallets.

The FBI stated that the Harmony breach resulted from an aggressive malware campaign called TraderTraitor (open in new tab) The FBI, the U.S. Treasury Department, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) warned that employees of encryption companies are being targeted with sophisticated "victim social engineering." Essentially, hackers use deceptive means to get victims to download malicious software.

According to the statement, "North Korean cyber actors used RAILGUN, a privacy protocol, to launder over $60 million in Ethereum (ETH) stolen in the June 2022 heist." The bulk of the ill-gotten Ethereum "was then sent to several virtual asset service providers and converted to Bitcoin."

The FBI has reportedly worked with the virtual asset service providers to freeze some of the stolen assets. However, the actual amount is currently unknown. So far, 11 digital wallets have been publicly flagged by the FBI.

"The FBI continues to expose and combat the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's illegal activities, including cybercrime and virtual currency theft, to generate revenue for the regime," the FBI stated.

This is not the first large-scale crypto heist by the Lazarus Group: the organization was also involved in last April's $600 million Axie Infinity crypto heist (open in new tab). FBI officials told PC Gamer at the time that North Korea was using U.S. and UN sanctions,

telling PC Gamer that North Korea was funding its weapons program by committing crypto heists to circumvent U.S. and U.N. sanctions.