Stephanie Douse 
Following the US authorities discovery that linked Axie infinity Ronin hack to North Korea Lazarus group hackers, Binance CEO announced that the exchange has seized $5.8M from the hackers.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, announced that his team was able to recover $5.8 million from North Korean hackers who stole $600 million from the Axie Infinity play-to-win game last month.
The hackers were identified as the Lazarus Group, a North Korean outfit linked to the regime, by US officials after the theft.
CZ stated today on Twitter that it was able to recover $5.8 million from hackers who had transferred a portion of the stolen assets to Binance and dispersed it across 86 user accounts. He didn’t specify who owned the user accounts.
PeckShield, a security firm, said earlier this month that the hackers used Tornado Cash, an Ethereum mixer protocol that obfuscates transactions, to launder 7.5 percent of the stolen funds.
The hackers’ focus may have switched to using controlled exchanges like Binance to convert the stolen assets into fiat money.
The Axie team earlier stated that it was working closely with cryptocurrency exchanges to locate the monies that had been stolen.
Binance led a $150 million investment round with the game’s creator, Sky Mavis, earlier this month, with the goal of reimbursing victims of the attack.