Bybit Hacker Reportedly Launders Entire $1.4B Loot in Just 10 Days

The hacker behind the $1.39 billion Bybit exploit is claimed to have efficiently laundered all of the 499,000 ETH in simply ten days.

Regardless of blockchain analytics corporations, legislation enforcement businesses, and crypto exchanges intently monitoring the motion of the stolen funds, the attacker successfully leveraged decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols to wash them totally.

Laundering Particulars

On-chain analytics platform EmberCN began monitoring the funds quickly after they had been stolen. On February 25, the agency revealed that the hacker had laundered greater than 89,000 ETH, valued at about $224 million, in about 60 hours.

The attacker washed one other 45,900 ETH price some $113 million a day later, bringing the overall quantity laundered to 135,000 ETH. They repeated the method on February 27, swapping 71,000 ETH with a market worth within the area of $170 million.

At that time, about 4 and a half days after the assault, the perpetrator had managed to transform 206,000 ETH into different crypto property, averaging about 45,000 ETH each day. Nonetheless, they nonetheless had one other 292,000 cash left, price a whopping $685 million, and labored relentlessly night time and day to wash them.

In response to EmberCN, by February 28, the unhealthy actor had added one other 59,800 ETH to their laundered loot, bringing it to 266,000 ETH, with 233,000 remaining. Curiously, on March 1, a Saturday, the exploiter took a break from cleansing the stolen funds, managing to clear solely a comparatively modest 14,300 ETH valued at $32.2 million.

They resumed actions the subsequent day, changing 62,200 ETH, and by the morning of March 4, EmberCN reported that the attacker had laundered all of the remaining funds.

Bybit’s Take

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou has supplied a barely totally different take from the analytics agency’s. In an X post on Tuesday, he supplied an govt abstract of the assault, stating that about 83% of the stolen funds, price roughly $1 billion, have been transformed into Bitcoin (BTC) and unfold throughout practically 7,000 wallets.

Of the overall quantity misplaced within the exploit, 20% can’t be traced, whereas 3% has been frozen. Zhou additionally claimed that a big chunk of the untraceable funds, about 79,655 ETH, was laundered by means of the eXch trade.

The attacker, linked by the FBI to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, additionally processed one other 40,233 ETH through OKX’s web3 pockets. Nonetheless, on-chain detectives have traced about 16,680 ETH, with the remaining seemingly gone with the wind until Bybit will get further info from OKX.

In response to Zhou, the first platform the hackers used within the laundering course of was THORChain. He estimates that greater than 361,000 ETH, valued at over $900 million, has been swapped through the cross-chain liquidity protocol.