While new hacking incidents occur in the cryptocurrency sector every day, South Korean police have announced the 2019 hacking incident and those responsible for it for the first time.
Accordingly, South Korean police confirmed for the first time that 342,000 Ethereum were stolen from Upbit, South Korea's largest exchange, by North Korean official hacker groups Lazarus and Andariel in 2019.
According to an investigation, the Lazarus and Andariel hacker groups, part of the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau, stole 342,000 Ethereum from Upbit in November 2019, local news agency Yonhap reported.
Police said the hackers traded 57% of the stolen Ethereum for Bitcoin at a very low price through three crypto exchanges run by North Korea. The rest of the funds were reportedly laundered and distributed across 51 global exchanges.
South Korean police added that in October 2020, police found some of the stolen assets on a Swiss trading platform, recovering 4.8 BTC in October of this year and returning it to Upbit.
*This is not investment advice.