According to CoinDesk, hackers suspected to be from North Korea’s Lazarus Group attacked the global cryptocurrency exchange Bybit on Sunday, stealing $1.5 billion. This attack triggered a massive withdrawal of funds, with investors withdrawing approximately $4 billion.
As a result, Bybit lost $5.5 billion in total.
After the hacking incident, panicked investors rushed to withdraw their funds from the platform.
Last week, Bybit announced that it had suffered about $1.5 billion in damage from the hack. Reports indicate that the attackers targeted one of Bybit’s Ethereum wallets.
This is the largest cryptocurrency hacking incident ever, surpassing the $470 million Mt. Gox breach in 2014 and the $611 million Poly Network exploit in 2021.
Founded in 2018, Bybit is one of the world’s leading cryptocurrency exchanges. Its average daily trading volume is over $36 billion, and at its peak, it was ranked second in the world in trading volume.
Before the attack, Dubai-based Bybit had assets worth approximately $16.2 billion. Despite losses of about $5.5 billion, it still has assets worth more than $10 billion.
Bybit’s CEO, Ben Zhou, posted on X that while hackers stole one of Bybit’s offline Ethereum wallets, all other assets remain secure.
Elliptic, a cryptocurrency security firm, has linked the attack to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, known for its global cryptocurrency theft operations.
In a previous strike, Lazarus targeted four South Korean exchanges in 2017, stealing approximately $200 million in Bitcoin.