Elliptic Reports Lazarus Group Has Made Away With $230M in Crypto Over the Past 100 Days

The Elliptic Report

Elliptic, a blockchain surveillance company, released a report on Friday regarding the exploits executed by the notorious cybercriminal group Lazarus. The firm noted that the group was involved in five major attacks over the last three months.

Last week’s exploit on cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx was the latest. The trading platform lost over $50 million to the criminals. In total, Elliptic says the Lazarus group has pocketed $230 million in digital assets over the past 100 days.

According to the blockchain surveillance company, money taken from CoinEx was transferred to an address used to launder funds that were stolen from Stake.com by the Lazarus group. Last week, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation reported that the cybercriminal group was behind the $40 million exploit on the Drake-backed cryptocurrency betting platform.

Elliptic’s Friday report corroborates that of blockchain observer ZachXBT, who tweeted on Tuesday that the Lazarus group had “accidentally” connected its crypto address to the Stake exploit on Polygon and Optimism.

The group then used a bridge to transfer the stolen crypto to the Ethereum blockchain. Most of the funds came from the Polygon and Tron blockchains.

Other Attacks Executed by the Lazarus Group

Meanwhile, the Elliptic report shows that the addresses involved in the Stake and CoinEx exploits were also used to drain Atomic Wallet over $95 million in June. Other attacks the Lazarus Group has executed since June include Alphapo and CoinPaid, both of which are cryptocurrency payment platforms.

Elliptic revealed the cybercriminal organization was now targeting centralized protocols rather than decentralized ones, arguing that social engineering attacks were more achievable to those targets.

CoinEx Letter to Its Attacker

Yesterday, CoinEx shared a letter on its X account, asking the Lazarus Group to contact the crypto exchange on the blockchain or via email to negotiate the return of the stolen crypto.

“Whether you are not satisfied with the existing state of blockchain security or you’re simply testing the security of our exchange, we hope to create an open communication channel where we can express our demands and engage in solution-finding discussions. We are convinced that dialogue and negotiation are the only effective solution.” part of the letter read.