North Korea’s Lazarus Group Identified as Culprit in Bybit Hack
Arkham Intelligence reported that North Korea's Lazarus Group was responsible for the $1.46 billion hack of Bybit, confirmed by onchain investigator ZachXBT. Arkham previously offered a bounty of 50,000 ARKM tokens for information on the attackers.
ZachXBT provided detailed evidence including transaction analyses and connected wallets used in the exploit. The hack is considered one of the largest crypto thefts to date, surpassing the $611 million stolen from Poly Network in 2021.
The attackers initially withdrew nearly $1.5 billion into a main wallet before distributing it across over 40 wallets. They converted various tokens to ETH and transferred funds in $27 million increments.
The breach was linked to "Blind Signing," a smart contract vulnerability where transactions are approved without full knowledge of their contents, increasingly exploited by advanced cyber actors like North Korea. Bybit's CEO confirmed the exchange remains solvent despite the loss.