In 2024, hackers supported by North Korea absconded with at least $659 million through a series of cryptocurrency heists, and also sent IT professionals to infiltrate blockchain companies as insider threats, as revealed in a rare joint statement issued on Tuesday by Japan, South Korea, and the United States.
This announcement marked the first official acknowledgment that North Korea was responsible for the $235 million hack of WazirX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, that took place in July. The incident prompted WazirX to halt trading activities and subsequently restructure its operations.
Other significant breaches included a $308 million theft from Japan’s DMM Bitcoin, as well as $50 million each from Upbit and Radiant Capital, and $16.13 million taken from Rain Management, per the joint statement.
The statement highlighted that the Lazarus Group, a notorious faction of North Korean hackers, employed social engineering tactics and utilized cryptocurrency-targeting malware such as TraderTraitor to execute these attacks. Additionally, they infiltrated companies by having North Korean IT professionals masquerade as job applicants.
The governments involved urged private sector organizations, especially those in the blockchain and freelance sectors, to closely examine these advisories and statements to enhance their cyber threat mitigation strategies and reduce the risk of inadvertently hiring North Korean IT workers.
Previous U.N. reports had estimated that from 2017 to 2023, North Korea pilfered $3 billion in cryptocurrency to finance its denuclearization efforts under international sanctions. Recent analyses from Chainalysis revealed that North Korean hackers accounted for 61% of all cryptocurrency thefts in 2024, amounting to $1.34 billion.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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