ransomware

Lazarus Group is a North Korean state-sponsored advanced persistent threat (APT) actor, also tracked as APT38, TraderTraitor, BlueNorOff, Hidden Cobra, and ZINC, operating under the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) of the Korean People's Army. Active since approximately 2009, the group has stolen an estimated $6.75 billion in cryptocurrency through targeted attacks on exchanges, bridges, and blockchain companies, using stolen funds to finance North Korea's weapons programs and circumvent international sanctions. The U.S. Department of Justice has indicted three named members, and OFAC placed the group on the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list in April 2022.

BlackSuit is a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) operation that emerged in May 2023 as a rebranding of the Royal ransomware gang, itself a successor to the Conti cybercrime syndicate believed to be operated by Russian-speaking threat actors. The group employed double-extortion tactics across critical infrastructure sectors including healthcare, automotive, education, and government, compromising over 450 U.S. victims and demanding more than $500 million in ransom, primarily in Bitcoin, before international law enforcement dismantled its infrastructure in July 2025 under Operation Checkmate.

TradeOgre was an unregistered, no-KYC cryptocurrency exchange founded around 2018 and known for listing privacy coins including Monero (XMR) and Pirate Chain. On September 18, 2025, the RCMP executed Canada's largest-ever cryptocurrency seizure, dismantling the platform and seizing over CAD $56 million (approximately USD $40 million) in digital assets. Investigators determined that the majority of funds transacted on the platform came from criminal sources, including ransomware proceeds, darknet market activity, hacking exploits, and fraud schemes.

C&M Software (also styled CMSW) is a Brazilian financial technology company authorized by the Banco Central do Brasil to provide connectivity between smaller financial institutions and Brazil's national payment infrastructure, including the PIX instant-payment system. On June 30, 2025, hackers exploited credentials sold by an insider employee to drain approximately R$800 million (roughly USD 140–148 million) from reserve accounts of at least six financial institutions, in what became Brazil's largest recorded banking cyberattack. A portion of the stolen funds—estimated at USD 30–40 million—was subsequently laundered through Latin American OTC desks and crypto exchanges using Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether USDT, with on-chain investigator ZachXBT playing a central role in tracing and partially freezing the laundered assets.