▲ Seoul Newspaper DB It has been claimed that the hacker organization Lazarus, believed to be behind North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, has stolen a total of $240 million (approximately 320 billion won) worth of virtual currency over the past three months.
On the 16th, Decrypt, a cryptocurrency media outlet, summarized the incident believed to be the work of Lazarus, citing a report published the previous day by cryptocurrency tracking company Elliptic.
The report pointed out that Lazarus is increasing its activity, including being involved in five major cryptocurrency hacking incidents that occurred within the past three months.
Most recently, this week, it was estimated that cryptocurrency exchange CoinX was hacked and approximately $54 million (approximately 71.8 billion won) was stolen. CoinX acknowledged on the 12th that cryptocurrency had been stolen. Elliptic recently revealed that some of the funds stolen from CoinX were sent to the cryptocurrency address used by Lazarus to launder the stolen funds.
Decrypt explained that some funds were also transferred to Ethereum through a software bridge. A bridge is a system used to transfer virtual currency between different blockchains. These funds were later traced to have been transferred back to a cryptocurrency wallet address known to be managed by Lazarus.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that Lazarus stole about $41 million (about 54.5 billion won) worth of virtual currency from the online casino and betting platform Stake.com earlier this month.
The White House said in June that North Korea is believed to be financing about half of its missile program through cryptocurrency theft and cyber attacks.
Reporter Moon Kyung-geun
2023-09-16 13:26:31
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