Hacker of Euler Finance Sends 100 ETH to a North Korean Address

Another major hack rocked the decentralized finance (DeFi) market last week in March. The attack on DeFi protocol Euler Finance drained a massive $197 million making it the biggest DeFi hack in 2023 so far.

While tracking the details of the movement of hacked funds, it turns out that the hack could be linked to North Korea. Among the series of transfers made by the hacker, one transaction of 100 ETH involves the movement of funds to an address linked to North Korean actors.

Chainalysis, the blockchain investigating platform identified that 100 ETH from Euler’s stolen funds have been moved to an address flagged in a previous hack having links to North Korea.

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100 ETH stolen in Monday's #Euler Finance hack have moved to an address associated with a previous hack carried out by #NorthKorea-linked actors. This may mean the Euler hack is the work of #DPRK too, or could be misdirection by other hackers. We'll share more details as possible https://t.co/DxvGsc90Z8 pic.twitter.com/5QPphNTyYY

— Chainalysis (@chainalysis) March 17, 2023

Details of the Euler Finance Hack

In a flash loan attack on the decentralized finance protocol Euler Finance, the hackers drained a total of $197 million last Friday, March 17. On the very next day i.e. March 18, the hacker released a total of 3,000 Ether (ETH) to Euler Finance’s deployer address with the funds arriving from Euler Finance’s hacker address.

Interestingly, soon as the hack happened, Euler Labs announced a $1 million prize for anyone who helps to track down the hacker. “Today the Euler Foundation is launching a $1M reward in the hope that this provides additional incentive for information that leads to the Euler protocol attacker’s arrest and the return of all funds extracted by the attacker. If you have any information you believe will be helpful, please send it to the Euler Foundation at reward@euler.foundation,” it noted.

Euler Labs CEO Michael Bentley also shared his displeasure over the hack adding that they have been conducting major security audits over the last year. In his tweets, Bentley wrote:

“Euler has always been a security-minded project. The Euler smart contracts, including the vulnerable lines of code, were audited. I want to thank the security experts who are working on leads for the investigation. There is little I can say publicly about this, but I want everyone to know that there is a large team of world-class individuals doing all they can night and day”.

The DeFi protocols faced massive hacks during the crypto winter of 2022 and collectively lost north of $4 billion in a single year.

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