Who Is Lazarus, And How Do They Steal Your Crypto?

Some of the biggest bitcoin thefts in history have been caused by the Lazarus Group, one of the most dangerous cybercrime organizations in the world. It is believed that the North Korean government funded the organization, which has been connected to many well reported assaults against cryptocurrency exchanges, financial institutions, and individual investors throughout the globe. 

Hackers associated with North Korea stole an estimated $2 billion worth of bitcoin in 2025, making up around 60% of all money thefts that year globally. These numbers highlight a paradigm change in cybercrime at the global level with state-sponsored players becoming more and more inclined to use digital resources as a prominent funding source.

Lazarus Group is not any other hacking syndicate. It functions as a so-called advanced persistent threat, i.e., long-term campaigns highly sophisticated in nature that are aimed at penetrating systems, stealing money, and remaining unnoticed over a considerable time. 

The cryptocurrency theft activities of the group can be traced back to the late 2010s, although its activities have increased exponentially in magnitude and complexity. Initial attacks were on exchanges and personal wallets with most being phishing email and malware to obtain any personal keys.

The group was already capable of performing large-scale attacks by 2023 such as a breach of Atomic Wallet that cost the company over $100 million. 

Nevertheless, the magnitude of operations had never been viewed before in 2025. Lazarus-related hacks in what has been reported as the biggest crypto theft of its kind, cost the Bybit exchange a total of around $1.5 billion dollars in Ethereum.  The attack entailed the use of a fabricated wallet transfer as a routine transfer, which successfully duped the system to approve a fraudulent transfer.

The involvement of the group was later verified by the authorities such as the FBI by associating the attack to the established Lazarus methods and blockchain transaction pattern. 

In more recent news, the group was involved in a theft of $30 million of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in South Korea, which demonstrates that the group is still interested in big-value centralized exchanges. 

How Lazarus actually steals your crypto

The tactics employed by the Lazarus Group are in a continuous state of development, but they usually fall into several basic tactics that unite both technical adventures and manipulation of people.

Social engineering is one of the most widespread methods when attackers lure people into providing the sensitive information. This may be in terms of fraudulent job offers, phishing emails or even impersonation schemes. Hackers are also known to impersonate recruiters or business partners to gain some trust before administering malware in some instances.

Recent reports indicate that the group is using sophisticated tricks including the use of fake Zoom meetings that have deepfake executives. Cyberspace victims are duped into believing that they are talking to the genuine company managers only to be duped into installing malicious software allowing the attackers into their systems. 

The other significant technique is malware and back doors. Malicious software when installed in a device can track activity, steal the key to privacy and make unauthorized transactions. In general, this is all that is required by the attackers because possession of a private key practically means possession of the crypto assets.

The group also takes advantage of the vulnerabilities in the crypto platforms themselves. With the Bybit hack, the attackers were able to exploit a multi-signature wallet system to deceive authorized users to accept a fraudulent transaction that transferred control of funds. 

It is half the battle to steal crypto. The Lazarus Group has devised new advanced methods of laundering money to cover the source of stolen money and transform it into assets that are usable.

After stealing money, it is immediately transferred through different wallets in what is referred to as chain hopping. This entails the transfer of assets between the various cryptocurrencies and sending them in many addresses to complicate monitoring.

Tumblers also involve mixing of funds which are stolen with legal transactions. This is done to de-anonymise the trace of blockchain transactions and it is much more difficult to track the money trail.

In other instances, the group may later convert crypto to fiat currency, which they can use in financing state operations. This is because according to experts, these funds are key in enabling North Korea to bypass the international sanctions as well as funding military programs. 

Why Lazarus targets crypto

State-sponsored hackers have a number of reasons to consider the cryptocurrency as an attractive target. Unlike conventional banking, crypto transactions are irreversible and once the money has been transferred, it cannot be restored easily.

Enforcement is also hard since the blockchain technology is decentralized. The system has no point at which accounts can be frozen or fraudulent transactions can be undone within the entire context of the ecosystem.

Moreover, in most instances, security has lagged behind the pace of rapid development of the crypto sector. Although trading and platform securities have been enhanced, hackers such as Lazarus still manage to uncover vulnerabilities, especially in the sophisticated systems of smart contracts and cross-chain bridges.

The other major contributor is anonymity. Although the blockchain transactions are publicly accessible, it is not always easy to find the face behind wallet addresses which gives the attackers a huge upper hand.

Although big exchanges are the most likely victims, individual users are by no means secure. It is true that most Lazarus attacks are based on the manipulation of human behavior and not necessarily on technical vulnerability.

One of the most successful tactics is phishing. Mails or messages are sent to users which look like they are received through legit platforms and the user is required to input the login details or download malicious software.

Networks related to cyber-activities by North Korea have also been implicated in romance scams and investment fraud. This is because victims are usually influenced to invest with phony crypto schemes after weeks or months of grooming, where their funds are lost. 

These schemes have taken even seasoned traders and developers, and the degree of sophistication is remarkable.

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