The United States has accused officials from North Korea's military intelligence of conducting a series of cyber attacks to steal $1.3 billion in digital and traditional currencies from banks and other victims.
On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Assistant Attorney General John Demers from the U.S. Justice Department stated, "North Korean agents, who use keyboards instead of guns, stealing digital wallets instead of cash bags, are some of the leading bank robbers in the world." The statement from the U.S. Justice Department explained that three officials from North Korea's military intelligence launched a campaign of cyber attacks to steal $1.3 billion in digital and traditional currencies from banks and other victims.
Demers noted that the three officials created malicious cryptocurrency applications and opened backdoors on the victims' computers to hack cryptocurrency marketing and trading companies like Bitcoin. They developed a platform using blockchain technology to evade sanctions and secretly raise funds. The case filed in a federal court in Los Angeles is based on charges from 2018 against one of the three, Park Jin Hyok, who was accused at that time of hacking Sony Pictures four years ago, creating the WannaCry ransomware, and stealing $81 million from the central bank of Bangladesh in 2016.
The new charges include two additional defendants, Jong Chang Hyok and Kim Il, with allegations that the three worked together in the North Korean military hacking group. They are also accused of hacking and stealing from cryptocurrency exchanges in Slovenia and Indonesia and extorting the New York Exchange for $11.8 million.
In a related vein, South Korean media reported that North Korea attempted to steal technology for manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines. According to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, North Korea tried to hack the servers of local pharmaceutical manufacturers to obtain technical information regarding COVID-19 vaccines and treatments. This claim was based on a report mentioned by parliamentary members citing the South Korean National Intelligence Service.
The agency added that "the National Intelligence Service stated, during a closed parliamentary session, that the average daily number of hacking attempts in South Korea increased by 32% year-on-year to reach 1.58 million cases." Yonhap explained that "most attacks did not succeed in achieving their goals, according to the South Korean intelligence agency." Earlier, Yonhap reported that opposition lawmaker Ha Tae-kyung indicated that "the National Intelligence Service and other sources confirmed that Pfizer was targeted by cyber attacks from the North."
