On Monday, January 23, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) published a report confirming that two groups linked to North Korea were responsible for the $100 million hack of the Harmony Bridge last year in June 2022.

The notorious Lazarus Group and APT38 outfits were responsible for attacking and stealing from the US-based blockchain specialist. The Horizon software allowed users to move their digital assets to different blockchain networks.

Over the last year, such cross-chain bridges have been subject to major exploitations and were a soft target for hackers. Across 13 separate attacks on cross-chain bridges last year, more than $2 billion worth of crypto assets were stolen.

In their report, the FBI noted that earlier this month on January 13, the North-Korean hackers used a privacy pool dubbed Railgun in order to launder $60 million worth of funds in Ether (ETH). The bureau noted that some of these funds were sent to different crypto exchanges and converted into Bitcoin.

As per the FBI report, the hackers used the RAILGUN protocol to obscure their transactions. While a portion of their funds was frozen by the exchanges, the non-recovered funds moved to the ETH addresses.