North Korea Supplied Weapons Program with Crypto Hacks
North Korean hackers have stolen an estimated $2 billion in cryptocurrency, revealed the UN, with the funds potentially supplying its weapons program.
North Korea received another confirmation on previous discoveries that it is one of the biggest crypto hackers around. The UN has discovered its findings that the country has managed to steal as much as $2 billion in funds, used to fuel its nuclear rocket program.
North Korean hackers are using increasingly sophisticated and untraceable attacks against banks and crypto exchanges, in the end managing to run away with the funds, reported Deutche Welle. The reports on the hacks arrive days before the UN convenes a security council on North Korea to discuss recent rocket tests.
“The industry knows the architecture of North Korean cyber activities quite well and the DPRK generally doesn't try that hard to obscure their operations,” revealed the report.
The hacking attempts of Lazarus and other groups have gained the attention of crypto analysts. The most notable pattern is the emergence of two groups, one that stored stolen funds for a long time before gradually liquidating them, and another group which immediately went for exchanges.
While some crypto exchanges are not anonymous, there are ways to liquidate funds in small batches even without full verification. The usage of digital assets also allows North Korea to bypass international sanctions on using regular payment channels.
North Korea’s usage of crypto assets somewhat mirrors that of Venezuela, which may have resorted to Bitcoin (BTC) trading to be able to keep access to at least some of its revenues. Thus, Venezuela aims to bypass the sanctions of its assets frozen by the US.
The Lazarus group has also been known for attacks against the data of Sony, as well as exploits against Indian banks. When it comes to crypto exchanges, it is difficult to estimate the authorship of the hack. Usually, hackers exploit human mistakes and bad storage practices. Using anonymous coins is also a possibility to obscure at least some of the transactions.