Bybit crypto exchange has become the victim of one of the largest crypto heists in history, with hackers stealing around $1.4 billion worth of Ethereum last week. In response, the company is offering a total of $140 million in bounties to anyone who can help trace and freeze the stolen funds.
Bybit’s CEO and co-founder, Ben Zhou, announced the bounty on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.
According to the official bounty page, for every instance someone traces and freezes part of the stolen funds, 5% of the recovered amount will go to the person who found it, and 5% will go to the entity that froze the funds.
At the time of writing, thanks to five bounty hunters, Bybit has already awarded $4.23 million in bounties.
The company is continuing its investigation into the hack, with Zhou stating that they will not stop until Lazarus Group or any other malicious actors in the industry are eliminated. Lazarus Group is a hacker collective believed to be backed by the North Korean government, known for targeting crypto exchanges and Web3 companies.
Security researchers and crypto security firms believe that North Korean-backed hackers are behind this massive heist. According to governments in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, North Korean hackers stole $650 million in crypto in 2024 alone.
On Wednesday, Bybit published preliminary findings from the forensic investigation led by Sygnia Labs and Verichains. Sygnia Labs reported that the attack was caused by malicious code originating from SafeWallet’s infrastructure, a crypto wallet platform. Verichains stated that a benign JavaScript file was replaced with a malicious version specifically targeting Bybit’s Ethereum Multisig Cold Wallet.
