The Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday that North Korea was responsible for the theft of around US$1.5 billion in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange ByBit.
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The agency said it refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as “TraderTraitor.”
“TraderTraitor actors are proceeding rapidly and have converted some of the stolen assets to bitcoin and other virtual assets dispersed across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains,” it said in a public service announcement.
The FBI said it is expected the assets will be further laundered and eventually converted to fiat currency.
ByBit said last Friday an attacker gained control of an ether wallet and transferred the holdings to an unidentified address.
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The ether cold wallet was the only one that was attacked and all other wallets of the exchange were unaffected, with withdrawals proceeding normally, CEO Ben Zhou said in a post on X.