North Korean hackers launder Binance hack $430,000 with meme coins
North Korean hackers just pulled off a clever crypto move, laundering $430,000 from the massive Binance hack by running it through homemade meme coins, according to blockchain firm Elliptic.
Over a few days in early November, they swapped 117,000 NEAR tokens for these custom coins, making the stolen money look like normal trading profits and much harder to trace.
Hackers used liquidity pools on DEX
The hackers set up liquidity pools on a decentralized exchange (DEX), using one set of wallets to buy the meme coins and another to sell them.
By avoiding direct transfers between their wallets, they kept things sneaky.
Elliptic found that nearly all trades came from the hackers themselves.
Trading stopped by November 8, and this laundering trick is similar to what was seen after last year's Bybit hack, making recovery of stolen funds tough.