Hunters are washing most of the stolenity encryption of $ 1.4 billion

The infiltrators who stole $ 1.4 billion in the Crypto Exchange bybit currency, transferred almost all the revenue and turned it into Bitcoin, while experts call it the first stage of the money laundering process.

On February 21, Bybit said that a “advanced attack” on a company’s portfolio It resulted in the theft of 401346 ethereumAbout $ 1.4 billion at the time, in what is the largest theft of encryption in history and possibly the biggest theft of any kind of ever. Blockchain monitoring companies And researchers, As well as the FBIThe North Korean government accused it of hacking.

Since the digital theft, the infiltrators have transferred all the impacts they stole from dozens of coding portfolios who originally divided the returns between them and turned most of the money into Bitcoin, according to Tom Robinson, co -founder and chief scholar at the SLA; Ary Redbord, a former federal public prosecutor and a chief treasury treasury, is now a global head of politics at TRM Labs, who is also a Blockchain monitoring company.

Andrew Ferman, head of the National Security Security Company at Blockchain Watch Company, Techcrunch that the company tracks about 90 % of the stolen BYBIT boxes, “The majority of which has been transferred to (Bitcoin) and being detained in about 4,400 addresses.”

The company said: “I lost about 10 % of the stolen money due to the fees/freezing/outside.” Out of the slope It is the services that transform into cash.

During this first stage between February 24 and March 2, North Korean infiltrators took steps to hide the stolen cryptocurrencies. According to Redbord, the infiltrators did this by mostly dependent on Thorswap, which is a central protocol that enables users to switch assets across different groups “without the need for an intermediary.”

Redbord said these washing steps showed an “unprecedented level of operational efficiency” from infiltrators.

“This quick laundering indicates that North Korea either expanded the infrastructure for money laundering or that financial networks under the ground, especially in China, have strengthened its ability to absorb and process illegal funds,” said Ridbord. “The scale and speed of this process represents new challenges for investigators, as the anti -traditional money laundering mechanisms (AML) are fighting to keep pace with the large size of illegal transactions.”

Meanwhile, both Redbord and Robinson said this is only the beginning of the infiltrators.

“They still have a way to take advantage of this money,” Robinson told Techcrunch.

Redbord explained that at the present time, the second stage necessitated the deposit of a “initial slice” of stolen boxes – now Bitcoin – into mixers, designed “to create suspicion of the tracking process” for the investigators. Encryption Mixers (Or Tumbles) are services designed to hide the origin and destination of a person’s cryptocurrency by mixing it with other users ’money.

“Even this point mainly, anyone with patience and willingness can follow the flow of BYBIT boxes. Robinson said the mixers are great obstacles to most investigators.

However, Redbord indicated that the mixers usually receive a size from a few million to 10 million dollars per day, so “whether these mixers can continue to absorb the amount of money in the play is an open question.”

In other words, while infiltrators got a large amount of looting of the BYBIT record, it is still unclear how clear the masters can turn it into money.

But there is still hope to restore some of them, according to Robinson.

“It is possible that at least some of these money will pass through the stock exchanges, as they can be frozen,” Redbird said. “It is just a matter of whether these exchanges are aware of quickly that they are dealing with stolen assets.”

After hacking, Bybit offer a total of 140 million dollars Anyone can help tracking and freezing money, a process that prevents anyone from reaching money. The company said it would pay 5 % of the recovered funds to the “entity that succeeded in freezing the funds”, and 5 % for those who informed the money for the first time and led to its freezing. As of the writing of these lines, Bybit was granted only $ 4.3 million to 19 fishermen, according to The official page of the reward.

He did not respond byBit to request a comment.