Norwegian government freezes and returns $5.7 million linked to Ronin hack

The Norwegian government froze and returned $5.7 million in related funds, including $600 million. ronin theory

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Exploit in 2022.

Ronin is an Ethereum sidechain built to support Play-to-Earn Web3 games. axi infiniti AXS

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Created by developer Sky Mavis.

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The Axie Infinity web3 game creator said recovering assets would require a joint effort between law enforcement, lawyers, accountants and blockchain forensics companies such as Chainalytic. It was confirmed that 15% of the funds would be used to cover costs and the remainder would be deposited into the Axie Infinity treasury.

“We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone who assisted in the recovery efforts, especially Økokrim and the FBI in the United States, who are working tirelessly to track down and recover these assets for the Axie and Ronin communities.” Sky Mavis added.

The game developer has so far said about $40 million in separate assets have been frozen by law enforcement, but has repeatedly said it will take some time to recover and that it cannot provide a specific time for their return at this stage.

Ronin’s $600 Million Exploit

The March 2022 Ronin exploit remains the largest DeFi exploit in history, resulting in the loss of more than $600 million in cryptocurrency assets, according to The Block’s data dashboard. This attack, along with other hacks such as the $100 million Harmony bridge exploit in January 2023, has been linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group.

The attack resulted in the loss of 173,600 ETH (worth approximately $590 million at the time) and $25.5 million worth of stablecoin USDC.

Specifically, this incident resulted in 5 out of 9 validator private keys on the Ronin network being compromised. Once that validator was controlled, the attacker gained the ability to authorize and execute fraudulent transactions to drain funds from the Ronin bridge, which is used to transfer assets between the Ronin sidechain and the Ethereum mainnet.

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