$1.4 Billion Bybit Hack: eXch Accused of Handling Stolen Crypto

The hack, which took place on February 21, resulted in the loss of $1.4 billion, with investigators pointing to North Korea’s Lazarus Group as the likely culprit.

In a February 23 post on Bitcointalk, eXch dismissed the accusations, stating, “eXch is not laundering money for Lazarus/DPRK”. The platform assured users that its operations were running normally and that no funds had been compromised.

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However, it acknowledged that a small portion of the stolen assets had passed through one of its wallets. Despite this, blockchain analysts have linked eXch to a much larger share of the stolen funds.

On February 22, on-chain investigator ZachXBT alleged in their Telegram group that eXch processed $35 million from the hack. He also noted that the exchange accidentally transferred 34 Ethereum ETH $2,682.64 worth about $96,000, to another platform’s hot wallet.

Additionally, security firm SlowMist posted on X that a “significant amount” of Ethereum had been converted into other cryptocurrencies on eXch.

Bybit, which continues to operate despite the attack, announced on February 23 that it had successfully frozen more than $42 million of the stolen assets through coordinated efforts. However, it appears to be struggling to get eXch’s cooperation.

In a forum post, eXch shared its response to Bybit’s request to freeze stolen funds. The exchange accused Bybit of previously blocking deposits from some of its users and ignoring attempts to resolve the issue.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou responded to a screenshot of the exchange’s post, urging eXch to reconsider. He said, “At this point is really not about bybit or any entity, it's about our general approach towards hackers as an industry”.

Recently, ZachXBT and tanuki42 from zeroShadow raised concerns about security gaps in Coinbase $1.67B . What did they say? Read the full story.