North Korea-Affiliated Lazarus Group Behind CoinEx Hack: Report

North Korea’s notorious state-backed Lazarus Group is speculated to be behind the $55 million hack of crypto exchange CoinEx. According to prominent on-chain sleuth ZachXBT’s latest update, the attackers “accidentally” connected their address to the $41 million hack of the betting platform Stake.com.

Just a day after the exploit, the investigator flagged an Ethereum wallet address that was likely owned by the attackers of both CoinEx and Stake.com, implying that the same group was responsible for executing the exploit.

• The wallet in question, which had received funds from the recently hacked betting platform, interacted with the address that received the siphoned funds from CoinEx, ZachXBT noted.
• The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had previously confirmed that North Korea-affiliated Lazarus Group was responsible for a $41 million theft from Stake.com.
• Following several alerts of the breach by on-chain investigators, CoinEx confirmed that its Risk Control System detected anomalous withdrawals from several hot wallet addresses used to store the exchange assets.
• CoinEx has temporarily paused deposits and withdrawals as it investigates the hack that transpired across three different blockchains – Ethereum, Tron, and Polygon – and involved a wide variety of tokens.
• Initially, the estimated sum of the hack was $28 million. However, Slow Mist’s security platform spreadsheet later revealed that the actual amount stolen had risen to approximately $55 million.
• CoinEx has announced that it would provide a “comprehensive report” and detailed timeline of the hack.
• In the same statement, the crypto exchange also promised to compensate losses for all the affected users.