North Korea could be behind Axie Infinity’s $625 million heist

Axie Infinity and other crypto-based games have had problems keeping players around and massive heists of at least one native coin certainly don’t help. The US government may have found the culprit of that crime — it’s at least pointing the finger.

At the end of March, an unknown thief made off with $625 million in crypto from Axie Infinity, the world’s biggest NFT game. By exploiting the Ronin Network validation nodes of Axie’s developer Sky Mavis, the culprit was able to fake validation signatures and steal a combined fortune of Ethereum and USD Coin. Checking the US Department of the Treasury’s North Korean Designation Update, one can see a “digital currency address” for Ethereum. As PC Gamer points out, this address matches one found on the Ronin Bridge Exploiter list. This link was then confirmed to PC Gamer by the department. Thus, North Korean state collective the Lazarus Group is being fingered for the theft.

Crime is still crime, though it should be pointed out that NFT- and blockchain-based titles largely operate outside of the mainstream gaming world. Valve kicked all such games off of Steam last fall, and Ubisoft’s Quartz program has seen sluggish sales since its launch. It’s no wonder then that game developers are more interested in things like unionization.