North Korea’s Lazarus Group pulled off the $1.5B Bybit hack, making it the biggest crypto heist ever. Here’s how they did it—and what’s next.

Assets were stolen from Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange Bybit earlier this month, in what's believed to be the largest-ever digital heist.

The FBI has accused North Korean-linked hackers of conducting one of the largest known thefts of cryptocurrency — worth some $1.5 billion — from a Dubai-based firm.

The FBI referred to the attack as “TraderTraitor,” a malicious campaign linked to North Korean state-sponsored hackers the Lazarus Group.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday that North Korea was responsible for the theft of approximately $1.5 billion in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange ByBit.

One of the largest publicly-known thefts of cryptocurrency was conducted by North Korean hackers, according to the FBI, who stole $1.5 billion worth of Ethereum from a popular crypto exchange.

The FBI has accused the North Korean Lazarus Group of being behind the largest cryptocurrency theft in history.

North Korea is behind the massive crypto hack, according to several blockchain monitoring firms and a well-known researcher

The Lazarus Group, a cybercrime syndicate linked to North Korea, has long been a thorn in the side of the crypto industry. Since 2017, the group has stolen over $6 billion in digital assets, funneling the proceeds into the country’s ballistic missile program. The Bybit heist alone accounts for nearly a quarter of that total.

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As news started spreading about a massive hack on crypto exchange Bybit last Friday, cybersecurity researchers quickly concluded that the era of giant digital-asset heists had entered a new and potentially ruinous phase.