A notorious North Korean cybercrime unit is suspected of receiving the proceeds from a recent multimillion-dollar cyber-heist involving Atomic Wallet.
Cryptocurrency forensic specialists at Elliptic disclosed that part of the Atomic Wallet stolen funds was tracked to Sinbad.io, a crypto mixing service that had previously been linked to the notorious Lazarus Group.
Elliptic's investigators broke the news on June 5th, revealing that Sinbad.io, a crypto laundering tool, had received part of the $35 million plundered from Atomic Wallet.
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The mixing service has a history of being used by the Lazarus Group, which reportedly laundered over $100 million in cryptocurrencies.
The amount transferred to Sinbad.io from the ill-gotten gains wasn't disclosed by Elliptic. However, they did note the swindled assets were being exchanged into Bitcoin (BTC) before being dispersed through the mixer, making the trail harder to follow.
Intriguingly, Elliptic's report also suggested that Sinbad.io might be a rebranded version of Blender.io. The latter has its scandalous history, having previously been implicated as a primary conduit for laundering funds stolen by the Lazarus Group. It holds the dubious honor of being the first mixer to fall under sanctions from the US Treasury Department.
Atomic Wallet's security was breached on June 3rd, resulting in a significant loss of over $35 million. While the company acknowledged the attack, it downplayed the severity, asserting that fewer than 1% of its monthly active users were impacted.
The company's chief marketing officer, Roland Säde, expressed the firm's desire to recover the stolen funds. Säde insisted that a solid plan would emerge once the investigation was completed.
Of course, the team is devastated as we have been very proud about our security. We are working around the clock to get it all resolved and come out of this crisis stronger than before.
In the meantime, victims of the hack were advised to monitor and report any suspicious transfers to popular crypto exchanges, such as Binance and Coinbase.
This would hinder the hackers' attempts to convert their ill-gotten gains into cash. But with the stolen funds already being laundered through Sinbad.io, it might be a race against the clock to halt the dispersal of the funds.
