The North Korean hacker collective Lazarus Group is up over $40 million on the proceeds from last year’s Radiant Capital hack, and now it’s trading the ether (ETH) market like a pro.
The group’s movements were picked up by EmberCN, a Chinese-language blockchain data analysis account on X.
It noted that the hackers sold “9,631 ETH at an average price of $4,562 for 43.937 million DAI just a week ago,” before buying the dip today for a total of 4487.8 ETH with an average price of $4,154.
Read more: The solution to crypto’s Lazarus problem could be simpler than expected
After spending the first half of August surging from $3,400 to almost $4,800, close to its all-time-high of November 2021, ETH’s momentum stalled in the past week, hitting a low of around $4,070.
Despite ETH’s latest pullback, the Radiant hacker’s well-timed trades mean they’re currently holding almost 180% of what they originally stole.
EmberCN calculates that the hacker “holds 14,436 ETH and 35.29 million DAI, worth $94.63 million. Compared to the $53 million he stole last year, his gains have already increased by $41.63 million.”
Last year’s attack on DeFi protocol Radiant Capital relied on a “multisig hijacking” strategy, in which team members were tricked into signing over control of one of their contracts.
It was later discovered that a well-known member of the Ethereum security research community, going by the alias Nick L. Franklin, was in fact involved in the preparative stages of the heist.
Read more: DeFi security researcher implicated in $50M Radiant Capital hack
The same strategy was used to far more devastating effect on centralized exchanges WazirX and ByBit, who lost $230 million and $1.5 billion worth of crypto assets, respectively.
Yesterday, security researcher Daniel Von Fange proposed an adjustment to the typical multisig workflow to reduce the success rate of these kinds of attacks.
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Source: https://protos.com/lazarus-hackers-have-become-excellent-eth-traders/