Bitcoin layer-2 developer, Alex Lab, suspects that the $4 million exploit it experienced in May is most likely connected to the infamous North Korean hacking group, Lazarus Group.
In a post on June 25, Alex Lab highlighted three wallet addresses that hackers used on May 16 to drain funds from the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol based on Bitcoin.
In addition, the team disclosed that they worked with independent blockchain investigator, ZachXBT, to gather the necessary evidence linking Lazarus to the exploit.
On May 16, Alex Lab informed users on X that attackers had taken advantage of its BNB Smart Chain bridge, resulting in the loss of approximately $4.3 million worth of funds.
The hackers also exploited around $13.7 million worth of the Stacks (STX) token. However, some of the stolen funds were sent to centralized exchanges and subsequently frozen by those exchanges.
On June 20, Alex Lab revealed that the attacker had carried out over 11,800 STX transactions, utilizing various DeFi protocols and bridges such as Arkadiko, Bitflow, and Allbridge to offload the stolen STX.
At the time, the team stated that the exploit involved the hackers gaining access to the team’s private keys. Nevertheless, they assured users that the smart contracts of the Alex Protocol itself were never compromised.
As part of their recovery plan, the team offered the attackers a 10% reward if they returned 90% of the stolen funds and pledged not to pursue legal action. However, the attackers did not respond to this offer.
The price of the ALEX token, the native token of the Bitcoin layer-2 protocol, has dropped by 10% in the past week and is down by 47% in the last month. It is currently being traded at $0.07.
The ALEX token has experienced a nearly 50% decline in value over the past month. (Source: CoinMarketCap)
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