Bybit CEO Ben Zhou Says North Korean Hackers Converted $1B of Stolen ETH into Bitcoin

The CEO of the recently hacked crypto exchange Bybit says that North Korean hackers have converted 417348 stolen Ethereum (ETH) into Bitcoin (BTC).

The CEO of recently hacked crypto exchange Bybit says that North Korean hackers have converted 417,348 stolen Ethereum (ETH) into Bitcoin (BTC).

According to Bybit CEO Ben Zhou, North Korean state-sponsored hackers stole around $1.4 billion in ETH from Bybit and bridged a significant portion of the assets to Bitcoin.

“Total hacked funds of USD 1.4bn around 500k ETH, 77% are still traceable, 20% has gone dark, 3% have been frozen.”

The Lazarus Group, a notorious North Korean hacking collective, compromised Bybit’s Ethereum wallets last month in what is believed to be the biggest heist in history. To turn the stolen ETH into BTC, they mostly used THORchain, a decentralized cross-chain liquidity protocol that allows for the exchange of assets between various chains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum and the BNB Chain, says Zhou.

The next two weeks will be critical for freezing the stolen funds at crypto exchanges.

“83% (417,348 ETH, ~1B) have been converted into BTC with 6,954 wallets (Average 1.71 btc each). This and the coming week is critical for fund freezing as the funds will start to clear at exchanges, otc and p2p.

Hacker mostly used THORChain to clear ETH to BTC

361,255 ETH or $0.9B, which is 72% was through Thor, which we can trace.

79,655 ETH ~16% of the funds went dark through ExCH still waiting for update.

40,233 ETH or $100M, which is 8% was through OKX web3 proxy. Out of them, 16,680 ETH we can trace 23,553 ETH or $65M (~5%) is untraceable which require info from OKX web3 wallet.”

As part of efforts to recover the stolen funds, ByBit has launched lazarusbounty.com to track stolen funds and offer rewards for assistance.