(BBC News) A company that fell victim to what is thought to be the world’s biggest-ever theft is seeking to recover some of its losses by crowdsourcing online bounty hunters.
Last week, hackers believed to be from North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group stole $1.46 billion of cryptocurrency from ByBit, a crypto trading platform.
The criminals are trying to rapidly cash out through a complex online money-laundering process.
ByBit is now offering cash rewards to anyone who spots and prevents them from cashing out.
“Join us on war against Lazarus,” the company’s CEO Ben Zhou posted with a link to a new website offering a bounty to anyone who can help.
Cryptocurrencies are stored in public wallets so it is possible to follow the money as the criminals split it into smaller chunks and send it through various channels to obscure its origins.
The new site has a live leaderboard showing companies and individuals who have successfully located some of the coins.
The bounty scheme gives 5% of the sum identified to individuals who successfully persuade a company that has control of the funds to freeze the money.
It is also awarding 5% to the companies that take action.
The website is already displaying millions of dollars in payments to successful crypto sleuths.
“We have assigned a team to dedicate to maintain and update this website. We will not stop until Lazarus or bad actors in the industry is eliminated,” Zhou said.
Crypto investigation firm Elliptic described it as a “really positive innovation.”
“There are a lot of very talented blockchain investigators out there who will now be motivated to track down these stolen funds, and to help to seize them,” said Tom Robinson, from Elliptic.
However, Louise Abbott, crypto fraud partner at Keystone Law, suggested the heist would still “negatively impact the perception of trust” in what she said was already a “volatile” industry.
“If such a hack can occur on this scale in the world’s second largest exchange, it can certainly happen again,” she said.