On May 29th, the latest disclosure by blockchain security analyst ZackXBT has sounded the alarm for the cryptocurrency investment field. The North Korean hacking Group Lazarus Group launched a cyber attack on May 24th and successfully stole assets worth over 5.2 million US dollars from an individual cryptocurrency trader. This incident has drawn high attention from the industry to the security protection of individual investors.
The Lazarus Group demonstrated superb technical means and complex modus operandi in this attack. They successfully invaded the victims’ exchange wallets, multi-signature wallets and external accounts by implanting complex malicious software. The multi-signature wallet was originally designed to enhance security and requires the joint authorization of multiple key holders to complete transactions. However, it was still broken through by hackers, which fully demonstrates the sophistication of its attack technology. After succeeding, the hackers quickly transferred the stolen funds to the coin-mixing service Tornado Cash, attempting to cover up the flow of the funds. Among them, approximately 1,000 ETH have been cleaned, further increasing the difficulty of tracking.
Looking back at the past criminal record of the Lazarus Group, its attack targets were mainly focused on financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges. In 2022, the organization became notorious for the Ronin Network attack on Axie Infinity. That attack led to the theft of 620 million US dollars worth of cryptocurrencies, setting a record for losses from hacker attacks in the cryptocurrency field at that time. Nowadays, it has turned its attention to individual investors. The reasons behind this shift are worth in-depth exploration. On the one hand, with the popularization of the cryptocurrency market, the number of individual investors has soared. Among them, some investors have weak security awareness and insufficient protective measures, making them “easy targets” in the eyes of hackers. On the other hand, the security protection system of institutions is constantly upgrading. In contrast, attacking individual investors may be less costly and have a higher success rate.
This attack incident has had multiple impacts on the cryptocurrency market. From the perspective of investors, the confidence of individual investors has been undermined. Many people have begun to re-examine their investment security strategies and consider how to enhance wallet protection and prevent malicious software intrusion. For the cryptocurrency industry, it has also exposed that there are still many loopholes in the market’s security protection aspect. Neither exchange wallets nor multi-signature wallets, which are considered relatively secure, have been able to resist hacker attacks. This has prompted the industry to further enhance the research and development of security technologies and improve the security protection system. At the same time, regulatory authorities may also intensify their supervision over the cryptocurrency market as a result, especially for tools like coin mixing services that are prone to being used for money laundering and concealing the flow of criminal funds, and more stringent regulatory policies may be introduced.
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