Atomic Wallet Heist Tops $100 Million, Method Still Unknown, Says Surveillance Firm Elliptic
The surveillance firm's analysis reportedly shows that the reported losses suffered by Atomic Wallet users has now risen to more than $100 million. There has still been no explanation from Atomic Wallet regarding the root cause of the losses.
- "We are tracking well over 5,500 crypto wallets believed to have been compromised in the attack," said the surveillance company.
"I'm afraid we have no insights into the underlying exploit," Elliptic's Chief Scientist and co-founder Tom Robinson told The Block. "It's becoming clear that this is a major crypto heist, and most probably another significant success for North Korea's Lazarus Group. They had been relatively quiet since last year's Horizon bridge hack, but this shows that they are still actively targeting the crypto ecosystem."
- "Our team has partnered with several investigators and exchanges around the world to trace and freeze the stolen funds. This has led to over $1 million in stolen assets being frozen."
- "In response to the freezing of these funds, the thief has begun to change their behavior. In particular, they have turned to the Russia-based Garantex exchange to launder the stolen assets."
- "Garantex was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury in April 2022 for its role in laundering the proceeds of ransomware and darknet markets."
- Atomic Wallet is a closed source wallet. It boasted of serving over 5 million users prior to the hack.
