North Korea's Lazarus Group Scores $2.51M Profit in Daring Crypto Heist!

Holy smokes! North Korea's notorious Lazarus Group just pulled off a slick move, raking in a cool $2.51 million profit after flipping 40.78 Wrapped Bitcoin they snagged two years back.

Get this: according to the eagle-eyed folks at SpotOnChain, a wallet that's all but confirmed to be Lazarus Group's just dumped 40.778 WBTC, worth a whopping $3.51 million, for 1,847 Ethereum. Talk about a high-stakes game!

After cashing in, the wallet didn't waste any time. It split 2.507 ETH into three different wallets, sending out batches of 205 ETH, 500 ETH, and a hefty 1,865 ETH to yet another Lazarus-linked address. These guys are playing chess while the rest of us are playing checkers!

Just today, the Lazarus Group, those North Korean cyber wizards, sold off 40.78 $WBTC for a staggering $2.51 million profit—that's a 251% return! They scooped up the $WBTC for 999.9K $USDT at around $24,521 back in February 2023, and flipped it for 1,857 $ETH at a jaw-dropping $86,170 just 12 hours ago. And then, the hackers...

Back in February 2023, this wallet shelled out roughly 999,900 USDT to grab 40.78 WBTC when it was trading at $24,521. Fast forward to now, and Wrapped Bitcoin has skyrocketed over 240%! Right now, WBTC is changing hands at a mind-blowing $83,459.

When they made their move, WBTC was sitting pretty at an average of $86,170. That's how they managed to pocket a sweet $2.51 million in profit—a 251% return—after holding onto 40.78 WBTC for about two years. These guys know how to play the long game!

The Lazarus Group's On-Chain Shenanigans

These wallets, which everyone's pretty sure belong to North Korea's infamous Lazarus Group, are under the microscope 24/7 by on-chain data sleuths. Ever since they hacked Bybit, these guys have been busy laundering their ill-gotten gains by swapping them into different cryptos and spreading them across a bunch of wallets.

On March 4, they managed to launder nearly 500,000 ETH—worth a cool $1.39 billion—from the Bybit heist in just 10 days. And get this: they used the cross-chain liquidity platform THORChain to process a staggering $605 million in a single day! These hackers are operating at warp speed!

According to the data wizards at Arkham Intelligence, a wallet tied to the Lazarus Group is sitting on around $1.1 billion in crypto, mostly in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether. That's a war chest if I've ever seen one!

And if that's not enough, the Google Threat Intelligence Group has spotted a surge in North Korean IT workers trying to worm their way into tech and crypto companies across Europe. These IT workers are the perfect insider entry points for state-sponsored hacking groups like Lazarus. It's like a cyber espionage thriller playing out in real-time!