The Ronin Bridge Exploit Was Initiated By North Korean Hackers Lazarus

The US Treasury Department has come to the conclusion and alleged that the North Korean hacking group, Lazarus, is linked to the Ronin Bridge exploit which cost the Axie Infinity creators more than $600 million.

How they Discovered This

As of Thursday, the Treasury Department added a specific Ethereum wallet address to its sanctions. This came after Nansen had labelled the address as one of the attackers within the Ronin Bridge exploit.

Soon after this, Chainanalysis tweeted that this address “was involved in the Ronin hack, having received 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC from the Ronin Bridge smart contract during the attack.”

Finally, Ronin Network added to their blog to confirm the scenario. They said: “Today, the FBI attributed North Korea-based Lazarus Group to the Ronin Validator Security Breach”.

Ronin has also mentioned that a full “post-mortem” will take place at a later date.

Details on the Ronin Bridge Exploit

Recently, Ronin’s bridge platform was hacked for a total of roughly $625 million. Immediately, no one had any idea who was responsible for the hack. But now it has been alleged that it was the Lazarus group who were responsible.

Since the hack, Sky Mavis, the creator behind the top play-to-earn game, Axie Infinity, has paid back $450 million out of its own pocket to users who lost their money. The company was worth around $3 billion at its peak, in Q3/Q4 of last year.

The fact that there’s been an official Government response is a good step forward in the process of resolving the case. Now, we are unsure of what will happen to go into the future.

The Lazarus group is infamous for its hacks, and its involvement with the North Korean State. The FBI has labelled the group as a “North Korean state-sponsored hacking organisation”. In the past, it’s been reported that they have hacked Sony pictures, Bangladesh Banks and various other cryptocurrency attacks. Now, the Ronin Bridge exploit is just their latest.