The Lazarus Group is accused of stealing £17 million in Crypto Assets, leading to the collapse of the crypto trading platform Lykke.

On August 18, the North Korean hacker organization Lazarus Group was identified as a potential mastermind behind the theft of funds from the UK-registered crypto assets trading platform Lykke. If confirmed, this would be the largest scale cryptocurrency theft carried out by North Korea in the UK to date. This isolated country has acquired billions of dollars in recent years by stealing crypto assets to support its military and nuclear programs. Lykke was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Switzerland but registered in the UK. The company stated last year that its losses in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto assets totaled $22.8 million (approximately £16.8 million), forcing it to suspend operations. In March of this year, a UK court ruled for the liquidation of the company following a lawsuit filed by over 70 affected users. The UK's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) listed North Korea as a potential attacker in a recent report. The report stated: "This attack has been attributed to malicious cyber hackers from North Korea who stole funds on the Bitcoin and Ethereum networks." The Treasury stated that OFSI did not disclose the source of information but maintained close cooperation with law enforcement. Israeli crypto asset research firm Whitestream also separately blamed this attack on the Lazarus organization. The company claimed that the attackers laundered the stolen funds through two other crypto asset companies notorious for "helping users cover their tracks," thereby evading AML regulations. However, other researchers have questioned this conclusion, stating that it is currently impossible to determine who attacked this trading platform.