Greece Makes First Crypto Seizure Tied to North Korea's $1.5B Bybit Hack

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Greek authorities person carried retired the country’s archetypal cryptocurrency seizure, blocking entree to funds lifted from February’s grounds $1.5 billion Bybit hack linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.

The Hellenic Anti‑Money Laundering Authority traced a suspicious transaction to a wallet that on‑chain information tied to the archetypal theft. That wallet, according to Greece’s Minister of Economy and Finance Kyriakos Pierrakakis, was tied to a “Greek level providing speech services.”

Analysts, according to a blog post, utilized Chainalysis Reactor to representation the travel of funds to found “a definitive transportation betwixt the cryptocurrency successful the fishy user’s wallet and the superior wallets utilized successful the Bybit hack,” the station adds.

The grounds allowed the bureau to contented a freezing order, locking the assets earlier they could disappear. Per Pierrakakis, the Hellenic Anti-Money Laundering Authority’s operations person allowed for astir 10 cardinal euros ($11.7 million) to beryllium retuned to victims. It’s unclear whether immoderate of these returns are related to the caller seizure.

The hackers person successful the past moved funds done mixers specified arsenic Wasabi and Tornado Cash, cross‑chain bridges and peer‑to‑peer desks.

Bybit’s nationalist LazarusBounty dashboard suggests that astir $72 million, 5% of the stolen ether, has present been frozen, portion a 3rd remains traceable. Around $870 cardinal stolen from Bybit person present “gone dark,” according to the dashboard.

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