North Korean Hackers Siphon Off $100m From Atomic Wallet Users

• The North Korean Lazarus group is becoming dominant in the crypto space with its unethical attempts.
• Atomic Wallet has become their recent and second biggest target after Horizon Bridge.

Atomic Wallets, a renowned noncustodial decentralized wallet has become the latest victim of notorious hackers. Reportedly, its users have lost their entire portfolios and the incident has rocked the crypto community too. This is also a major concern because Atomic Wallet took full responsibility for securing its users’ assets. And yet, they seem to be downplaying the concerns of their users. 

Losses to a great volume

As per the reports released by Elliptic, the losses have now reached the figure of $100 million. The intensity of the attack and magnitude of loss has made it a piece of massive news in the crypto community. The number of wallets that have been compromised is approximately 5500. 

Irrespective of the immensity of the attack, Atomic Wallet does not seem to be proactive in addressing its customers. They have not released any formal clarification over the incident and they seem to be taking things lightly. The company posted its last tweet on June 7.

Meanwhile, frustrated users have gone ballistic on Atomic Wallet on Twitter. One such user, Ezra Carlson tagged the company and posted an angry message. She asked why the company is not paying attention to her grievances. She blamed the company for being aware of the safety concerns and not warning any of its users about it. She further added that they didn’t tell that using the wallet was not secure and right after a transfer, the tokens were stolen., 

Users criticize Atomic Wallet

Another user named Real Deal Crypto lamented that Atomic Wallet has left its users in the lurch. Their last post was done five days ago and they haven’t even issued an apology or acknowledgement of the incident.

However, on June 3, Atomic Wallet shared reports of some compromised wallets in a tweet. But they totally underestimated it and said that it is less than 1%. The company said that they are investigating the breach and will update the users as soon as they have updates. 

Ellistic has said that the notorious North Korean ring, the Lazarus group has executed this heist. They believe that the group is responsible for stealing over $2 billion in crypto assets. According to the analyst agency, after the Horizon Bridge incident that sees the theft of $100 million, this is the second time the group has gone active.

Taking the onus of recovering the stolen funds, Elliptic said that it is collaborating with international investigators. They are gearing up for mobilizing the resources and they have also successfully frozen stolen funds worth $1. The analyst said that since the freezing of tokens, the hackers have changed their strategy and means of utilizing the funds a bit. According to them, they have now collaborated with Russia-based Garantex exchange to channel their ill-procured assets.

Conclusion

Recently, cybercriminals have targeted a number of crypto firms including Jimbo’s protocol and Tornado Cash’s governance. The former faces losses amounting to $7.5 million. Based on the Chainalysis report, the hackers procured $3.8 billion last year. And a large number of these attacks were carried out by the North Korean group itself.