The Hackers behind the Bybit Heist have successfully laundered $224 million from the $1.46 billion windfall they pulled from the exchange.
The Hackers who stole 499,000 ETH have laundered 89,500 ETH ($224M) in the past two and a half days.
The amount of money laundered makes up 18% of the total cash stolen from the exchange.
Giving the frequency and pace of the hackers. It would take them half a month to fully launder the remaining 410,000 ETH in their position.
The percentage of money laundered indicates that the hackers still have a long way to go before they fully launder the loot. This gives time for a possible recovery and allows time for other strategies put in place by Bybit to catch up with the hackers.
Sophisticated Laundering Scheme
The Bybit Hackers, now believed to be members of the Notorious North Korean Lazarus Group, employ a sophisticated strategy to launder the $1.46 billion Ethereum assets they stole from Bybit.
The Hacker’s first move was to convert the stolen assets into manageable forms. Within the first few minutes of the theft, they exchanged their stolen assets for Ether, a native blockchain asset.
From there, the broke up the transaction trail by dispersing funds into numerous wallets
For example, one initial hacker address split 400,000 ETH into 40 separate addresses, each holding 10,000 ETH. This breakup strategy makes tracking the funds very difficult and nearly impossible.
The hackers further muddied the pond for the good guys by channeling the stolen assets through decentralized exchanges (DEXs), cross-chain bridges, and centralized exchanges.
Hackers also use special exchanges known as anonymous swaps to exchange assets without leaving a footprint. An example of such an exchange is eXch, which has facilitated swapping over $75 million from the stolen funds.
The above laundering pattern is consistent with the North Korean Lazarus group strategy, which has successfully laundered billions of dollars in crypto in the past.
Recovery Measures
Bybit has offered a 10% reward to White Hat hackers who can help recover stolen funds.
Onchain Sleuth ZachXBT is also on the case, having initially exposed the wallets used by the hackers to launder the stolen money.
The Public Nature of Blockchain remains the biggest hope of the Bybit team, as the hackers are betting against the entire industry.
Since the hack, about $40 million has been frozen, presenting a glimmer of hope for Bybit, which is set to lose a year’s worth of profit should the hackers succeed.
