It was found that a commercial currency exchange and related companies cooperated to freeze the account of a North Korean hacking organization containing virtual currency worth 1.4 million dollars (approximately 1.8 billion won).
According to Free Asia Broadcasting (RFA) on the 16th, Elliptic Enterprises, a British block company analysis company, announced on the 14th that two of the world’s largest virtual currency exchanges, Binance and Huobi, were found to have stolen funds from the North Korean hacking organization Lazarus. It said that the currency account was frozen.
The frozen account contained about $1.4 million worth of virtual currency, which was confirmed to be part of the $100 million worth of virtual currency that Lazarus stole from blockchain technology company ‘Harmony’ in June of last year.
Lazarus is known to have hacked ‘Horizon Bridge’, a service that sends cryptocurrency stored in one blockchain to another blockchain at the time of Harmony’s hacking.
Elliptic explained, “We confirmed that the stolen funds had flowed into the exchange through a complicated transaction process.”
The U.S. authorities emphasized the importance of public-private cooperation as it was recently discovered that a North Korean hacking organization was using a new mixer technology to evade U.S. sanctions.
A mixer is a technology that splits virtual currency so that it is not known who sent it, and North Korean hackers have been using it to launder the stolen cryptocurrency.
A State Department spokesperson told RFA that “to mitigate the North Korean cyber threat, it is essential that governments, network security officers, private businesses, and the public remain vigilant and cooperative.” .
“North Korea is targeting more financial institutions, virtual currency exchanges and virtual asset service providers to extort more than $1 billion,” he said. It can provide enormous funds to North Korean institutions subject to UN sanctions, such as one institution,” he pointed out.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.