North Korea Launders Stolen Binance Crypto a Second Time, Making It Harder to Freeze

[Financial News] North Korean hackers who stole billions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency from Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, last month are reportedly moving into a second round of money laundering. They are likely to eventually convert the stolen crypto into U.S. dollars and cash out.
The U.S.-based North Korea-focused outlet NK News reported on the 2nd (local time) that North Korea was using a 24-hour automated system to convert cryptocurrency stolen from Binance on the 29th of last month into another form. In a press release on the 31st of last month, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said North Korea was behind the group that hacked Binance on the 29th of the same month and stole cryptocurrency worth about $6.3 billion (approximately 8.4766 trillion won). It added that it had “identified signs that the hackers were converting the stolen assets into Ethereum, another cryptocurrency.” The FBI said the operation was led by TraderTraitor, a cryptocurrency-focused subgroup of the North Korean hacking group Lazarus Group.
On the 2nd, U.S. cryptocurrency analytics firm Chainalysis reported that North Korean hackers had begun converting crypto they had previously exchanged for Ethereum into another cryptocurrency, Solana. Chainalysis said it had “identified a new laundering phase by North Korea-linked actors involving funds stolen from Binance.” The hackers are believed to be trying to make the funds harder to trace by converting the stolen assets into other cryptocurrencies such as Solana and then converting them back into Bitcoin. They are reportedly in the process of exchanging 975,522 Solana tokens, worth about 129 billion won, for Bitcoin. North Korean hackers are disrupting efforts to track the funds by repeatedly making more than 3,000 transfers across over 1,000 wallets.
Chainalysis estimates that North Korea plans to convert the stolen cryptocurrency into Bitcoin, which is relatively easy to cash out. After completing this second round of laundering, the hackers are expected to break the funds into smaller amounts and move on to a third phase: converting them into real-world currencies such as U.S. dollars and cashing out.
Chainalysis explained that “as of the 2nd, further movement of the more than $1 billion in Ethereum and $1.42 billion worth of Bitcoin stolen from Binance is limited,” adding that “the activity observed immediately after the hack is consistent with an initial laundering phase involving the isolation and dispersal of funds.”
 
[email protected] Park Jong-won Reporter