On February 21, 2025, a major hack hit Bybit, one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges. Majority of the digital money hacked, over $1.4 billion, amounts to Ether (ETH). Later, it was assigned to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, a known cybercriminal team.
Ben Zhou, Bybit’s CEO, has recently shared his view on the situation. Of the stolen funds, he said, about 88.87% are still traceable while 7.59% have been hidden in the dark web beyond accessible with any known technology. In addition, another 3.54% of the funds have been frozen and can not be moved.
In order to hide the stolen money, the hackers used special tools (crypto mixers) such as Wasabi, CryptoMixer, Railgun, TornadoCash. These methods make it more difficult for authorities to track the flow of the money. In addition, their stolen Ether was converted to Bitcoin (BTC) and divided into more than 9,000 crypto wallets.
The missing funds have been requested to be found by Ben Zhou. Across the board, Bybit has gathered 5,012 reports, 63 of them being helpful. Still, they’re looking for more bounty hunters to help solve the case.
However, Bybit admitted that they were aware of the security issues months prior to the hack but did not manage to fix them in time. They are now working on enhancing security, so as to stop the attacks in future.
Bybit is still trying to recover what was lost, but this hack is considered one of the biggest crypto thefts ever.
Also read: Bybit’s $1.5B Hack Exposes Crypto Exchange Risks – How to Safeguard Your Assets
