On June 5, Elliptic, a blockchain compliance analytics firm, reported that funds from the recent $35 million Atomic Wallet hack were traced to Sinbad.io, a crypto mixer known to be favored by North Korea’s most notorious cyber-hacking group, the Lazarus Group.
Several user accounts of Atomic Wallet were compromised on June 3, resulting in losses up to $35 million. The company, however, downplayed the severity of the attack, stating that less than 1% of its active users were impacted.
The illicit funds were converted into Bitcoin before being obfuscated through Sinbad.io. This mixer was previously used by the Lazarus Group to launder more than $100 million in stolen crypto assets.
Atomic Wallet’s Chief Marketing Officer, Roland Säde, affirmed that the team is making efforts to recover the funds. They are encouraging victims to track the illicit transfers and report them to popular crypto exchanges to prevent scammers from exchanging their funds.
Elliptic further suggests that Sinbad.io might be a rebranded version of Blender.io, another mixer heavily used to launder Lazarus Group funds and the first mixer to be sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
As the stolen funds are already being laundered through Sinbad.io, it might become challenging for many affected users to recover their funds. However, renowned blockchain analyst, @Zachxbt, managed to track transactions associated with the stolen funds, leading to the recovery of $1 million belonging to one of the victims.