A significant portion of the stolen Bybit funds remains traceable following the massive cyberattack, as blockchain analysts continue working to freeze and recover them.
The crypto sector was shaken on February 21 by the biggest hack in its history when Bybit suffered a loss exceeding $1.4 billion. The stolen assets included liquid-staked Ether (stETH), Mantle Staked ETH (mETH), and several other cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain security experts, including those from Arkham Intelligence, have pointed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group as the likely perpetrators. The hackers have been actively moving the funds in an attempt to obscure their origins.
Despite these efforts, Bybit’s co-founder and CEO, Ben Zhou, revealed that nearly 89% of the stolen assets remain traceable. He stated in a March 20 post on X:
“Total stolen funds amount to approximately $1.4 billion (around 500,000 ETH). Of that, 88.87% is still traceable, 7.59% has gone dark, and 3.54% has been frozen.”
Zhou further explained that 86.29% of the stolen funds, or about 440,091 ETH (~$1.23 billion), had been converted into 12,836 BTC spread across 9,117 wallets, with an average of 1.41 BTC per wallet. The stolen crypto was largely funneled through Bitcoin mixers such as Wasabi, CryptoMixer, Railgun, and Tornado Cash to obscure its trail.
Continued Efforts to Track and Recover Funds
This update comes nearly a month after the attack. The Lazarus Group successfully laundered all the stolen Bybit funds through the decentralized cross-chain protocol THORChain within 10 days.
Nevertheless, blockchain analysts remain optimistic that some of these funds can still be frozen and recovered.
The Bybit CEO emphasized the growing need for blockchain “bounty hunters” and ethical hackers to help counteract illicit activities linked to North Korean cybercriminals. He stated:
“In the past 30 days, 5,012 bounty reports were received, with 63 being valid. We welcome more reports and need more bounty hunters skilled in decoding cryptocurrency mixers.”
$2.2M Paid in Bounties to Track Lazarus Group
Bybit has distributed more than $2.2 million in rewards to 12 bounty hunters who provided valuable intelligence that could aid in freezing the stolen funds, as reported by LazarusBounty, a platform tracking these payouts. The exchange has also offered a bounty of 10% of any successfully recovered funds to white-hat hackers and investigators.
Lessons from the Bybit Attack
The breach has highlighted that even centralized exchanges with robust security protocols remain vulnerable to highly sophisticated cyberattacks.
“This incident serves as yet another stark reminder that even the most advanced security systems can be compromised by human error,” said Lucien Bourdon, an analyst at Trezor, in a statement.
Bourdon explained that the hackers leveraged an advanced social engineering scheme to trick key signers into authorizing a malicious transaction that drained assets from one of Bybit’s cold wallets.
The Bybit hack surpasses the infamous $600 million Poly Network exploit from August 2021, making it the largest crypto exchange breach ever recorded.
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