[ad_1]
The monitoring company said North Korean-linked hacks jumped from four in 2020 to seven in 2021.
North Korea launched an attack on at least five cryptocurrency platforms that extracted about $ 400m worth of digital assets last year, one of the best in history, blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis said in a new report.
“From 2020 to 2021, the number of hackers connected to North Korea increased from four to seven, and the cost from hacks increased by 40 percent,” the report said Thursday.
“When North Korea received the money, it began to hide carefully to hide and withdraw money,” the report added.
The United Nations Security Council in North Korea has accused Pyongyang of using stolen money to support its nuclear and ballistic missile defense programs.
North Korea does not respond to media inquiries but has already issued statements denying allegations of theft.
Last year The United States paid three North Korean software developers operating smartly in the country is a major, multi-year threat aimed at stealing more than $ 1.3bn in cryptocurrency, which involves banking companies going to Hollywood movie studios.
Chainalysis did not recognize all the targets of the hacks but said they were mainly financial and trading companies, including Liquid.com, which announced in August that an unauthorized user had acquired some of the cryptocurrency wallets it managed.
The attackers used fraudulent schemes, coding, malware, and sophisticated engineering to transfer money from “hot” Internet-connected organizations to North Korean-controlled addresses, the report said.
‘Carefully Prepare’
Much of what happened last year must have been the case with Lazarus’ group, a US-sanctioned terrorist group, which is said to be under the control of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, North Korea’s intelligence chief.
The group is accused of participating in the “WannaCry” ransomware attack, robbing global banks and customer accounts, as well as the 2014 cyber-attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment.
North Korea also appeared to encourage efforts to launder cryptocurrency, greatly expanding its mixed services, or software tools to identify and scramble cryptocurrencies with thousands of addresses, Chainalysis said.
The report said researchers had raised $ 170m in the past, unsecured cryptocurrency from 49 different hacks from 2017 to 2021.
The report said it was unclear why the robbers would still have the money, but said they could expect to break the legal interest rate before withdrawing the money.
“Whatever the reason, the length of time (North Korea) wants to spend this money is illuminated, because it shows a careful, not just desperate and fast system,” Chainalysis concluded.
[ad_2]
Source link
