North Korean hackers stole about $400 million worth of cryptocurrency last year through cyber-attacks on digital currency outlets, blockchain data platform Chainalysis said Thursday.
Pyongyang is under multiple international sanctions for developing its atomic bomb and ballistic missiles, but analysts say the North has also built its cyber capabilities with an army of thousands of highly trained hackers who are raising money to fund the state’s weapons programs.
In 2021, the hackers launched seven attacks on crypto platforms, extracting assets from “internet-connected ‘hot’ wallets” and moving them to North Korean-controlled accounts, Chainalysis said.
“Once North Korea got the funds into custody, they started a careful money-laundering process to cover it up and pay it out,” Chainalysis said in a report published on its website.
“These complex tactics and techniques have led many security researchers to characterize cyber actors for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) as advanced persistent threats.”
The report highlighted the rise of Lazarus Group, which rose to prominence in 2014 when it was accused of hacking into Sony Pictures Entertainment in revenge for “The Interview,” a satirical film that mocked leader Kim Jong Un.
“As of 2018, the group has stolen and laundered massive amounts of virtual currencies each year, typically more than $200 million.”
The hackers are also targeting a wide variety of cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin, the world’s largest digital currency, accounting for just a quarter of stolen assets.
“The growing variety of stolen cryptocurrencies has necessarily increased the complexity of North Korea’s cryptocurrency money laundering operation,” said Chainalysis.
North Korea’s cyber program dates back to at least the mid-1990s, but has since grown into a 6,000-man cyber war unit known as Bureau 121, operating out of several countries, including Belarus, China, India, Malaysia and Russia. a US military report from 2020.
The United States this week imposed new sanctions on North Korea after what Pyongyang called hypersonic missile tests on January 5 and 11.
South Korean and Japanese officials on Friday said North Korea fired an unidentified projectile eastward during its third suspected weapons test in just over a week.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)