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A crypto platform says it has closed a $1.5 billion (€1.4 billion) gap in funds stolen by hackers earlier this week in what a research firm called the “largest crypto heist of all time”. The Dubai-based crypto platform Bybit said on X an attacker gained control of the exchange’s Ethereum wallet on February 21 as they were doing a routine transfer from a “cold” offline wallet to a “hot” online one. Ethereum is a popular type of funds were then transferred to an unknown address. The company said it locked down systems, secured funds, and collaborated with cybersecurity experts as soon as its team discovered the also offered a 10 per cent reward to security experts who helped to recover the funds, which could be up to $140 million (€134 million).‘Unprecedented show of solidarity’ The response was quick: crypto platforms and brokerages froze over $42.89 million (€41 million) in suspicious transactions to help Bybit recover those insight app Lookonchain said Bybit received roughly 446,870 in Ethereum (€1.17 billion) through loans, whale deposits, and currency purchases after the attack. Three days later, an independent audit found that Bybit had closed the gap of Ethereum assets in just under 72 hours with support from other crypto trading platforms and brokerages. The company said that the “unprecedented show of solidarity” has improved its resilience and “laid the foundation for stronger industry-wide measures to counter and prevent future hacking incidents”. North Korean group could be responsible, reports say Blockchain research firm Elliptic wrote in a report on Feb. 23 that this hack was more than double the last big hack, in which $611 million (€587 million) was stolen from the Poly Network in 2021. The report added that most of those funds were later returned by the hacker who stole them. Elliptic, which is working with Bybit to recover the stolen money, pointed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group as a possible perpetrator of the attack. The group’s laundering process starts by exchanging any stolen tokens for a blockchain asset like Ether, which Elliptic says “happened in the minutes following the Bybit theft,” as “hundreds of millions of dollars in stolen tokens … were exchanged for Ether”. Lazarus then conceals the stolen funds through “layering,” which makes the transactions harder to follow, such as by sending the stolen money to a high number of crypto wallets. Elliptic says Lazarus is “currently engaged in this second stage” after stolen funds were sent to “fifty different wallets,” and 14.5 per cent of the stolen assets, worth $195 million (€187 million), were systemically emptied from these wallets as of February 24. The Bybit theft is the latest in a series of thefts in the crypto industry, which totals more than $2 (€1.9 billion) in losses in 2024, according to Reuters. Euronews Next contacted Bybit for an update on the investigation and its fund recovery but did not receive an immediate response.
