(This January 23 story title and paragraph 1 have been officially corrected to say one hacker group, not two)
(Reuters) – A hacker group linked to North Korea, the Lazarus Group, also known as APT38, was responsible for the theft of $100 million from U.S. crypto firm Harmony’s Horizon Bridge last June, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Monday.
On January 13, North Korean cyber actors used a privacy protocol called Railgun to launder more than $60 million worth of Ethereum stolen during a June heist, the FBI said in a statement.
A portion of the stolen ethereum was later sent to several virtual asset providers and converted to bitcoin, the FBI said.
The FBI says North Korea’s theft and laundering of virtual currency is used to support its ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
In June last year, California-based Harmony said a hack had hit its Horizon Bridge, the underlying software used to transfer digital tokens such as bitcoin and ether between different blockchains.
In June, Reuters cited three digital research firms as saying that North Korean hackers were behind the attack on Harmony.
Harmony develops blockchains for decentralized finance – peer-to-peer sites that offer loans and other services like banks – and non-fungible tokens.
