Much more was stolen from Atomic Wallet than the company initially assumed. However, the perpetrator of this act has also been identified
Another high-profile scam in the cryptocurrency sector
Less than two weeks ago, the first information appeared that investors using the extremely popular cryptocurrency wallet - Atomic Wallet - suffered huge financial losses as a result of the exploit. The company behind this digital currency storage tool has been subjected to extremely intense criticism from the very beginning due to the lack of a constructive response on the matter. However, the important fact in this case is that thanks to the data that the cryptocurrency community obtained from external blockchain analysis companies, we found out how much money was stolen in total and who exactly is behind this scandalous attack.
Atomic Wallet robbed of $100 million
On June 3, 2023, Atomic Wallet informed the digital currency community that there had been a significant security breach of the company's wallets, as a result of which users began to communicate en masse on Twitter that they were most likely robbed of all funds by unknown perpetrators.
And that would be it for Atomic Swap's efforts, because the announcement actually ended attempts to solve the problem, and the company did not take any additional countermeasures. In the meantime, one of the angry customers accused the support of the company that about six months earlier he had suffered a very similar situation, during which about 1 BTC was stolen from his wallet. The team dealing with the technical issues of the digital wallet from Atomic Swap on a daily basis only wrote to him that they are very sorry about this unfortunate situation, but they are unable to do anything about it, and probably the injured user did not properly care for his private keys.
Due to the negligible reaction to these events from Atomic Swap, Elliptic took on the task of solving this case. It is worth adding that it is a platform whose main purpose is to analyze various events that take place on blockchains. Elliptic said in its report that a total of about 5,500 wallets were compromised and an amount equivalent to about $100 million was stolen.
After the disclosure of this data on Twitter, Atomic Swap again became the target of intensified attacks from its users, who this time accused the company of not addressing the update of the previously reported figures (initially, it was assumed that investors' losses amounted to about USD 35 million, and the attackers violated the maximum up to a thousand wallets) and issued absolutely no statement with information about the measures taken.
The attackers turned out to be the Lazarus Group
Elliptic said in its report that it was able to link the scandalous theft to the notorious North Korean regime-backed hacking team, the Lazarus Group. This cybercrime collective from Asia is responsible for dozens of hacks and exploits in the digital currency sector so far.
The same criminals are, among others, behind the high-profile attack on the Ronin Network, from which digital coins worth approximately $625 million were stolen during the crime. The North Korean organized crime group is estimated to have stolen more than $2 billion in various operations.
