Binance, Huobi Freeze $1.4m Worth of Crypto in ‘North Korea-linked’ Wallets

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper

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Tim Alper is a British journalist and features writer who has worked at Cryptonews.com since 2018. He has written for media outlets such as the BBC, the Guardian, and Chosun Ilbo. He has also worked...

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October 23, 2023 07:41 EDT

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The crypto exchanges Binance and Huobi have frozen “North Korea-linked” wallets containing “approximately $1.4 million in cryptoassets.”

Per a blog post from the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic and a report from MBC, the coins “originated from the June 2022 hack of Harmony’s Horizon Bridge.”

Elliptic said its “investigators” traced the coins through the Tornado Cash coin mixer.

The firm claimed that the coins had “remained dormant until recently,” when its investigators “began to see them funneled through complex chains of transactions, to exchanges.”

The firm claimed that it “promptly notified” Binance and Huobi about the “illicit deposits.” And it said the exchanges responded by “suspending accounts” and “freezing funds.”

Simone Maini, the Elliptic CEO, was quoted as saying:

“As an industry, we have the power and responsibility to prevent digital assets [from] becoming a haven for money launderers and sanctions evaders, and ensure that they are a force for good.”

The hack saw some $100 million stolen from Horizon Bridge. Security agencies in both the United States and South Korea have blamed the North Korean-linked Lazarus group for the attack. Many security providers have also pointed the finger at Pyongyang.

Experts have also claimed that Lazarus attempted to launder some $63 million worth of crypto through the Railgun protocol in January this year.

But this effort, exchanges claimed, was – at least partially – thwarted, with Binance and Huobi again teaming up to intercept a “hacker account.”

We detected Harmony One hacker fund movement. They previously tried to launder through Binance and we froze his accounts. This time he used Huobi. We assisted Huobi team to freeze his accounts. Together, 124 BTC have been recovered. CeFi helping to keep DeFi #SAFU! 🙏

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) January 16, 2023

More “Hacked North Korean Crypto Funds” Intercepted

And there was more bad news for suspected hackers – as Norwegian Police reported they had “seized $6 million” worth of funds stolen in the March 2022 Ronin bridge attack.

The gaming-focused bridge connects blockchain networks, and was used by the crypto game Axie Infinity.

Aleksander Larsen, the Co-founder and COO of Sky Mavis, the Axie Infinity operator, thanked Binance on Twitter for “acting fast and freezing” the funds.

Doing our part, to keep the ecosystem #SAFU. 🙏

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) February 16, 2023

The Binance CEO responded the exchange was “doing [its] part” for the crypto “ecosystem.”

Earlier this week, Elliptic claimed that Lazarus was currently making use of a coin mixer named Sinbad. The firm claimed that Sinbad was a “rebrand” of the now-defunct Blender mixing service.