After almost a year of a cyber attack on Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge, Norwegian police (Økokrim) have successfully recovered 60 million kroner ($5,800,000) worth of stolen cryptocurrency from the North Korean Lazarus hacking group.
“This is money that can support North Korea and their nuclear weapons programme,” Norway’s senior public prosecutor, Marianne Bender, released a statement.
This is the largest crypto seizure in Norway thanks to effective money-tracing capabilities and the persistence of Økokrim’s investigators. “Økokrim are good at following money,” Marianne Bender said, “This case shows that we also have a great capacity to follow the money on the blockchain, even if the criminals use advanced [hiding] methods.”
Last year in March, Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge got allegedly exploited North Korean hackers, making it one of the biggest attacks in blockchain history.
However, this wasn’t the first seizure after the cyber attack as the FBI froze $30,000,000 worth of cryptocurrency in September with the help of blockchain experts. Although the fraction of the total recovered funds is still less, different authorities coordinating with each other to seize all stolen funds.
The recovered fund will be returned to Sky Mavis to compensate affected users.
