FBI Confirms Lazarus Behind $1.5B Bybit Hack, Asks For Help

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) confirmed that North Korea’s Lazarus Group was behind the $1.5 billion Bybit hack and is urging the crypto industry to block transactions linked to the stolen funds.

The agency is calling on exchanges, node operators, and private sector players to prevent further laundering, as the hackers have already moved over 135,000 ETH. It flagged 51 Ethereum addresses tied to the attack, the largest crypto heist ever.

”Actors are proceeding rapidly and have converted some of the stolen assets to Bitcoin and other virtual assets dispersed across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains,” the FBI said.

It added that the stolen funds will “be further laundered” before eventually being converted to fiat currency.

About 363,900 ETH has remained unmoved. At ETH’s current price of $2,351.38 as of 7:07 a.m. EST, the assets are worth more than $855.6 million.

Most of the assets that were stolen from the centralized exchange on Feb. 21 were ETH, including liquid-staked ETH tokens, pseudonymous crypto analyst EmberCN said in an X post yesterday.

Some Of The Addresses Belonging To The Bybit Hackers Have Been Flagged

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic has also already flagged 11,084 wallet addresses suspected of being linked to the Bybit incident.

Join us on war against Lazarus – https://t.co/6DnaH1WTId
Industry first bounty site that shows aggregated full transparency on the sanctioned Lazarus money laundering activities. V1 includes:
– Becoming a bounty hunter by connecting your wallet and help tracing the fund, when…

— Ben Zhou (@benbybit) February 25, 2025

In response to the hack, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou rallied members of the Web3 community to join the “war against Lazarus,” announcing the launch of a Lazarus bounty site.

“We will not stop until Lazarus or bad actors in the industry is eliminated,” Zhou said on X in a Feb. 25 post.

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