Last week, hackers managed to steal approximately $1.4 billion in Ethereum cryptocurrency from the crypto exchange Bybit, marking what is believed to be the largest crypto heist in history. In response, Bybit is offering up to $140 million in bounties for anyone who can help trace and freeze the stolen funds.
Bybit’s CEO and co-founder, Ben Zhou, announced the bounty via a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.
According to the official bounty page, individuals who successfully trace and freeze any portion of the stolen funds will receive 5% of the amount, with another 5% going to the entity that successfully freezes the funds.
As of now, Bybit has already awarded $4.23 million in bounties to five bounty hunters, according to the site. The page features a logo depicting a knife stabbing through the head of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
“We will not stop until Lazarus or bad actors in the industry are eliminated. In the future, we will open it up to other victims of Lazarus as well,” Zhou wrote, referring to the Lazarus Group, a North Korean-backed hacker collective notorious for cryptocurrency thefts.
Multiple security experts and crypto monitoring firms suspect that the hackers behind the Bybit heist are linked to the North Korean government, which has become highly effective at targeting crypto exchanges and Web3 companies. In 2024 alone, the group is believed to have stolen $650 million in cryptocurrency, according to the U.S., Japanese, and South Korean governments.
On Wednesday, Zhou published preliminary findings from the forensic investigation into the hack, conducted by Sygnia Labs and Verichains. Sygnia concluded that the attack’s root cause was malicious code originating from SafeWallet, a crypto wallet platform. Verichains found that a benign JavaScript file had been replaced with a malicious version that specifically targeted Bybit’s Ethereum Multisig Cold Wallet.
Both security firms determined that the breach occurred when hackers compromised a developer’s device at SafeWallet, a fact later confirmed by the company.
