Chainalysis on September 8 announced they have recovered $30M worth of stolen crypto out of $620M in Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge exploit by Lazarus, a North Korean hacking group.
The security firm along with the FBI worked together with blockchain experts to trace down at least 12,000 wallet addresses to cash-out points by utilizing advanced tracing techniques.
The Ronin Bridge exploit is the biggest heist to ever happen committed by a North Korean hacking group. The hackers exploited 5 out of 9 validation keys on Ronin bridge to steal crypto tokens.
The Ronin bridge is actually a bridge between the Ronin network and the Ethereum blockchain. The users utilized this bridge to transfer funds from one platform to another.
The hackers found a loophole and exploited it to the point that the existing $620M crypto assets in ETH and USDC were drained out instantly, leaving many users empty-handed.
Since then, the Ronin Bridge team and Chainalysis have been working nonstop to recover 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC funds and were able to get back 10% of the stolen crypto.
The ban on Tornado Cash led Chainalysis and the FBI to recover these funds easily. Like Lazarus Group, The platform has been widely used for money laundering cases by criminals.