KOREA OF THE NORTH STEALED MILLIONAIRE CREDIT FUNDS TO SOUTH KOREA IN 2017, ACCORDING TO THE COUNTRY'S INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

South Korean officials declared before parliament on Monday that the North Korean hacker attacks of 2017 resulted in tens of millions of dollars in losses.

During a meeting of the National Assembly of the Asian country, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) revealed to the deputies that the attacks originating from the northern neighbor for the theft of cryptocurrencies are counted in tens of millions. The known attacks included phishing activities and infected emails.

In this process, North Korea has neutralized the vaccine technology of famous domestic companies and is trying to hack email and social networking service (SNS) from members of defense and security organizations.

Kim Byeong-gi
Deputy, National Assembly of South Korea

The Kyodo News media reported that the National Intelligence Service informed the National Assembly that it is investigating whether North Korea was behind the cryptocurrency theft for 58 billion yen ($ 534 million) from the Japanese exchange house Coincheck on the 26th. from January.

In mid-2017 there was a case where 17% of the assets of the Bithumb exchange house, the largest in the country, equivalent to 17 billion won (approximately 17 million dollars) disappeared. Two months later, the personal information of more than 31,000 users was leaked. As reported by the American cybersecurity firm FireEye, from May of this year to the present there have been attacks on at least 3 South Korean currency exchanges of cryptocurrencies by North Korea.

A wave of rumors has been circulating around the possibility that the government of Kim Jong Un is interested in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to finance the state after the important economic blockade imposed by the United Nations and other countries. The South Korean authorities have declared since August 2017 that it is possible that the bitcoin held by the government of North Korea derives from cyber attacks on investors and users from South Korea.

A hacker unit discovered a few days ago by the Financial Security System of South Korea, which was named as Andariel, managed to attack a server of a South Korean company last summer of 2017, mining 70 Monero coins that generated the equivalent of 13,962 Dollars. Kwak Kyoung-ju, leader of the research team, points out that this group of criminals is constantly seeking to generate small amounts of money without arousing alarms from cybersecurity platforms.