Cryptocurrencies are too juicy a booty for cybercriminals… and for certain countries that find them a quick way to finance themselves.

A few days ago, some cyber criminals 173,600 Ethereum was stolen in the NFT game Axie Infinity, for a value of 560 million euros. Today they are worth a little less, 526 million euros, because cryptocurrencies are still in free fall…

The FBI has revealed that a well-known North Korean hacker groupwhich brings back very bad memories for Sony, is behind hacking Axie Infinity.

NFT games offer unique characters or content, which are paid for with cryptocurrencies, and are then upgraded in-game and can be sold for more money. You have a more detailed explanation in this video:

Axie Infinity has its own cryptocurrency that is bought with Ethrerum through the bridge of a blockchain or own block chain, called Ronin.

This blockchain works differently from that of Ethereum and Bitcoin, which use a network of thousands of computers, which makes them highly polluting.

ronin it is faster and less polluting than the Ethereum blockchain, but a bridge must be established between the two to convert in-game cryptocurrencies to Ethereum, and vice versa, and to keep NFTs safe. Y that bridge is a point of vulnerability that cybercriminals have exploited to steal 560 million euros.

As reported TechExplorethe FBI has confirmed in a statement that Notorious North Korea-linked hacker groups Lazarus Group and APT38 are behind the Axie Infinity hack.

The group Lazarus became world famous in 2014 when hacked sony as a protest against the movie “The Interview”, a parody of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. They unearthed compromised emails, movie scripts, actor salaries, and other data.

According to a 2020 US intelligence report, North Korea maintains an army of 6,000 hackers divided into several groups, operating from different countries: China, Russia, India, Belarus, Malaysia, etc.

Since North Korea is a country subject to harsh sanctions, use these hackers to obtain funding through cryptocurrency theft, according to the American report.

These groups appropriated about 400 million dollars in cryptocurrencies in 2021according to Chainanalysis, a figure widely exceeded in a single theft, that of Axie Infinity, which, as we say, exceeds 500 million euros.