Officials in the United States allege that Lazarus Group, a North Korean hacking group supported by state officials, is involved with a major cryptocurrency hack which led to $615 million worth of digital assets being stolen.

Thursday was the Office of Foreign Assets Control of Treasury Department announcedLazarus is now subject to new sanctions for his ethereum wallet.

Crypto researchers claim that the wallet identified contains funds linked to an cryptocurrency attack on the Ronin NetworkThis is a supporter of the blockchain game Axie Infinity. In the attack, more than $600 million in ether and USDC tokens was stolen.

Hackers use what is called a blockchain bridge, which allows users the ability to move their digital assets between crypto networks. In the fast-growing field of Decentralized Finance, bridges have become a popular tool.

New sanctions have been announced that prohibit U.S. entities and individuals from transacting with an identified ethereum address to ensure hackers cannot “cash out”, any American crypto exchange funds. Elliptic, a blockchain analytics firm, stated in a blog post.

Chainalysis is another cryptocurrency research organization that stated the Lazarus attribution highlights “how DPRK threat actors exploit crypto” and provides better security for DeFi protocols.

Lazarus is thought to be controlled by North Korean states. It has been involved in several cyberattacks, such as a hack of Sony Pictures in 2014 and WannaCry ransomware attacks in 2017.

Cybersecurity experts have raised concerns that North Korea tried to use crypto in an attempt to circumvent U.S. sanction on multiple occasions. possible use of digital assets for Russian sanctions evasionThe Ukraine conflict.

Earlier in the week, Virgil Griffith (a 39-year old American crypto expert) was sentenced to five years in prisonFor North Korea to use virtual currencies in order to avoid sanctions

Cryptocurrencies are viewed as an effective tool for laundering illicit gains because activity is stored on a public ledger called the Blockchain.

According to Elliptic, however, criminals can use a variety of methods to transact crypto. According to Elliptic, internal analyses suggest that Ronin Attacks “managed 18% of their stolen money” by Thursday.

In order to avoid a seizure, hackers initially exchanged stolen USDC tokens with ether via unregulated decentralized trading platforms. However, almost $17million of the proceeds was then laundered through centralized trading platforms like FTX.

Later, they used what is known as a mixer. This service aims at hiding the trail of funds through mixing streams of crypto transactions that could be identified with others. This mixing service is called Tornado cash and has received more than $80 million.