It has been some time since I posted about the Atomic Wallet hack that took place. And there have been a few updates or revelations that have come to pass since then. So I will try and get you up to speed. You can read my initial post about the hack here if you want to.

Lazarus Group is behind the hack

It was recently revealed that the famous or perhaps rather infamous Lazarus Group was behind the hack. And if you are not familiar with them or their work. They are a North Korean state-funded hacker group operating out of China. They have been responsible for a multitude of hacks and thefts. One of the more famous ones was the $100 million exploit of Horizon Bridge in June 2022. But their tally is close to $2 billion. They have been very busy over the years. And according to the reports they were behind this hack as well.

The tally of this attack has also come in, it is around $100 million that has been taken from over 5,000 wallets that have been hacked. This figure has been more than doubled from the $35 million that was first reported. We know this not thanks to Atomic Wallet, but thanks to Elliptic’s analysis which has been tracking the stolen funds. 

Elliptic has been able to track the stolen funds from over 5,000 hacked wallets. The funds have been routed through channels and have been laundered through Garantex, a Russian-based exchange. This is most likely due to the tracking of the stolen funds by companies like Elliptic. Thanks to them partnering up with several exchanges they have been able to freeze a lot of the funds stolen in other hacks. And this is believed to be the main reason why Lazarus Group appears to have changed its behavior.

Garantex was sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury in April 2022 for helping to launder money obtained from ransomware attacks. Something that seems to have become a small industry of its own in Russia over the years. But sadly these sanctions have not stopped the exchange from being able to operate. As they are still going strong.

If you want to learn and see more about how the funds are being moved Elliptic has hosted a series of tweets earlier today that shows in great detail how the bodies are trying their best to shake off the trackers. It is an interesting read in its own right. You can find the thread here.

Atomic Wallets' less than lackluster response to the situation

If you read my previous post this will most likely not come as a shock to you. But it appears that Atomic Wallet is giving this the good old silent treatment. I assume hoping it will all blow over. But from what I can see their users are not very impressed by this, or by how the company has handled the whole incident.

These three tweets are literally all the information I have been able to find from the company. There has been nothing tweeted by them after the 8th of June. Which is more than a week. And I where not able to find any information on the website either. And I would not really be surprised if their users have not gotten any email updates on what has happened either. I can't help but read some pride into their second tweet. Saying it is less than 1% of their monthly active users who have been affected. Meaning they most likely were expecting things to be way worse. 

I can only assume they have 0 clue as to what happened, or how to fix it. Because if they did they would first and foremost have fixed it. And second, they would have let people know things were under control and the problem has been dealt with. To support this is a tweet from a user on the 13th. Saying the last update was five days ago, presumably on the 8th. But judging from the lack of information from the company this update did not fix the issue. 

Another user also called out the company for knowing they were being hacked. And still chose to not warn their customers. But I guess if they did warn people then everyone would stop using their crappy and flawed product. It is better to upset the people who already are upset some more, rather than risk a lot of users bailing. Companies like this just make me sick to the core.

I sincerely hope that if you are one of the 5m users the company claims to have, you at least consider changing your wallet to literally any other. Because this company has as far as I can tell shown literally 0 care for their customers or their funds. And if you know someone who is using the wallet. I implore you to encourage them to swap as well. 

Please share your thoughts on this situation which hopefully won't get any worse. Do you think I am being too harsh on the company, or am I perhaps not being harsh enough? As I say please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Picture provided by: https://pixabay.com/, https://hub.elliptic.co/, https://pngtree.com/so/north