Lazarus starts laundering the 400,000 Ether it stole from Bybit

The North Korean hacking group Lazarus has begun laundering 5,000 ETH of the 400,000 ETH stolen from Bybit, which amounts to approximately $1.5 billion. The movement was initially revealed by blockchain investigator ZachXBT and confirmed by Bybit CEO Ben Zhou. The stolen cryptocurrency was moved through a centralized mixer called eXch and then bridged to Bitcoin using Chainflip. Bybit experienced large inflows of over $4 billion in the past 12 hours, including 63,168.08 ETH, $3.15 billion in USDT, $173 million in USDC, and $525 million in CUSD, mostly from Bybit's own cold wallets to hot wallets to facilitate withdrawals. ZachXBT linked the Bybit hack to the Phemex hack, citing a shared address. Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed that withdrawals have returned to normal speed. The stolen ETH was tracked across 39 different addresses. This Bybit hack is now considered the largest crypto theft in history, surpassing the $611 million Poly Network hack and the $570 million Binance hack. Lazarus Group has been linked to crypto platform attacks dating back to 2017. All addresses associated with the stolen funds have been flagged to prevent laundering through major exchanges.