Expert North Korea hacker organization or PHEMEX exchange 70 million US dollars of stolen incident behind the scenes

PANews reported on January 24 that according to The Block, according to the analysis of multiple blockchain security experts, North Korean hackers may be behind the theft of more than $70 million worth of crypto exchange Phemex. The Singapore-based exchange was hacked on Thursday and later announced it was suspending withdrawals after suspicious activity was reported to it by multiple blockchain security firms. Approximately $30 million in funds had been stolen at that time, but the attacks appear to be continuing, with more tokens being stolen.

The attack appears to follow a similar threat pattern that has emerged when other well-known crypto exchanges have been attacked. Taylor, chief security researcher at MetaMask Monahan said: “In this event, a large number of different assets were withdrawn from multiple chains at the same time. These tokens were then immediately exchanged for native assets of the chain, starting with freezeable stablecoins and then in order of value. One by one, as with many attacks, the attackers appear to have targeted large assets first and then moved on. Start targeting less well-known tokens. All of these activities occur simultaneously, but they are not scripted. Assets are manually sent to a new address for redemption and then transferred to another new address. The assets will remain in storage until the actual money laundering team picks them up next week or next month."

Due to the high number of transactions and the wide range of blockchains targeted, Monahan said the attack was likely the work of "a repeat threat actor group."