• Norwegian authorities have recovered over $5.5 million from North Korean hackers connected to an Axie Infinity hack.
• The hackers were looking to cash out, but they couldn’t in time and had to be stopped by the FBI and the Norwegian authorities
• The international partners in the investigation were successful in preventing the exploiters from laundering the money and recovering millions of stolen assets from being used for more crime.
Axie Infinity Hack
Norwegian authorities have recovered over $5.5 million from North Korean hackers connected to an Axie Infinity hack. The record-high crypto seizure is the largest the Norwegian authorities have made. Norway’s National Authority of Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime, or Økokrim, has made its largest crypto bust yet. The economic crime unit recovered 60 million Norwegian kroner, or approximately $5.9 million, from hackers connected to an Axie Infinity hack in March last year.
Investigation
Since the announcement, the AXS and RON tokens have increased in value by 8% to $11 and 10% to $0.8788, respectively. With help from the FBI, Økokrim has been investigating the hack for almost a year. The hack was one of the largest hacks on Axie Infinity to date, and the hackers were looking to cash out, but they couldn’t in time.
The Hackers
In March 2022, hackers looted the Ronin Network, Axie Infinity’s host network, in one of the biggest crypto heists to date. The Axie Infinity hackers successfully breached the network to steal crypto assets worth $625 million at the time; this included 174,000 ETH and 26 million USDC. The Axie Infinity hackers found a backdoor through Ronin’s gas-free RPC node to abuse the Axie DAO validator.
North Korea Involvement
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) connected the hackers