Five recent crypto attacks with links to North Korea

Crypto hacks and attacks reached their peak in 2022. Over $3.8 billion was stolen from web3 platforms last year, the highest single-year loot recorded to date. Shockingly, more than $1.2 billion of these ill-gotten funds were tied to hackers sponsored by North Korea, as per findings from the National Intelligence Service (NIS), which is South Korea’s main spy agency.

Most recently, the Euler Protocol was hit by a $200 million hack on March 13. Hackers made use of a flash loan attack to syphon multiple tokens from the DeFi protocol. In all, the hackers made away with $137.1 million in stETH, $34.1 million in USDC, $18.9 million in WBTC and $8.8 million worth of DAI.

After the attack, the miscreants began funnelling their ill-gotten funds through a mixing service called Tornado Cash. This was done to obfuscate the money trail. Tornado Cash is a decentralised coin mixer that was recently sanctioned by the US government after reports that North Korean hackers were using it to channel stolen crypto funds.