According to a report by Chainalysis – a blockchain security company – which was published early last week, the total number of digital thefts in the world of digital currencies in 2022 amounted to 3.8 billion dollars, and hackers linked to the Korean government North was responsible for 45% of them.
According to Valx and quoted by Zycrypto, the months of March and October saw the highest number of thefts; 55 separate cases of theft with a cumulative value of more than 1.4 billion dollars! The months of November and February took the next places with 531 million and 430 million dollars, respectively.
According to the Chainalysis site, the value of stolen amounts has increased sixfold in the last 4 years and has created many uncertainties regarding the security of digital investment. Surprisingly, the number of hacks in 2022 was lower than the year before, although the value ($3.8 billion vs. $3.2 billion) was higher.
Lazarus hacking group – based in North Korea – is the biggest player in the country’s hacking space. The largely unknown 12-year-old group, also known as the Peacekeepers, is run by the North Korean government, according to limited evidence and hearsay, and is responsible for a significant number of cyberattacks against national security around the world.
The Lazarus Group, along with other lesser-known groups, were responsible for stealing $1.7 billion from various crypto networks and protocols worldwide. They beat the previous year’s record by $1.2 billion. This issue is very important for this isolated communist country; This amount is ten times the registered export of this country in 2020.
Many experts are of the opinion that these funds will be used to advance the country’s nuclear weapons program.
The field of DeFi was the biggest loser of these hacks. Chinalysis estimates the total loss of this sector in 2022 at around 3.1 billion dollars. Among the sub-sectors of the DeFi domain, inter-chain bridges – which are protocols for communicating between different blockchain networks and transferring capital between them – were the main targets of the hacks.
After the pressure of the US government to stop the operation of the popular mixer service Tornado Cash (Tornado Cash), which was a popular platform among hackers to launder and eliminate traces of their black money, a new platform called “Sinbad” that operates in a similar way to Tornado cache is created. In the last two months, this platform has handled 1,429.6 bitcoins worth approximately 24.2 million dollars.
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