A hacker belonging to the North Korean Reconnaissance Office released by the US Department of Justice on the 17th From the left, Changhyuk Jeon, Il Kim, Jinhyuk Park. Data provided by the US Department of Justice
The US Department of Justice prosecuted three North Korean hackers. It is charged with hacking against banks and companies around the world and stealing more than 1.3 billion dollars (about 1.43 trillion won) in cash and cryptocurrency (virtual assets).
The US Department of Justice said on the 17th (local time) that it had prosecuted three North Korean hackers in December of last year on charges of massive hacking and intercepting $1.3 billion worth of money and cryptocurrency. According to the complaint released that day, they were known as Jeon Chang-hyuk (31) Kim Il (27) and Park Jin-hyuk (36) belonging to the North Korean Reconnaissance Office. The U.S. government claimed that from 2015 to 2019, the U.S. government attempted to steal more than 1.2 billion dollars by hacking into the international financial computing network (SWIFT) used between banks in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Taiwan, Mexico, Malta, and Africa. .
The Ministry of Justice also stole tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies, including $75 million from Slovenian cryptocurrency companies in December 2017, $24.9 million from Indonesian cryptocurrency companies in September 2018, and 11.8 million dollars from a bank in New York last August. I thought I did.
The complaint also stated that they developed and distributed several malicious cryptocurrency applications (apps) from March 2018 to September last year. It is known that it is also related to the’Wanna Cry’ malware attack that hit the world in May 2017. WannaCry is a ransomware attack that encrypts all infected computers and decrypts them only by paying bitcoins, and the White House at the time pointed to North Korea as the background.
In particular, Park Jin-hyuk was charged with the U.S. government in 2018 on charges of hacking Sony Pictures, the production company of the movie’The Interview,’ about the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in November 2014. This is the first case of the US indicting a North Korean agent. In addition, Park Jin-hyuk is also accused of attempting to hack the Bangladesh Central Bank, which drew $81 million in 2016, and hacked into the US defense company Lockheed Martin in 2016 and 17. The Washington Post (WP) analyzed that “this move shows that North Korea, which is subject to sanctions by the United Nations and the United States, is increasingly dependent on financial cybertheft.”
First, the Los Angeles Department of Justice and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were issued a warrant to confiscate the $1.9 million cryptocurrency that hackers stole from a New York-based bank and stored in two cryptocurrency exchanges. The authorities plan to return this currency to the bank.
A Justice Department official also explained that a Canadian-American admitted to laundering the money they stole. “North Korean agents who use keyboards instead of guns and steal cryptocurrencies instead of cash sacks are the world’s best bank robbers in the 21st century,” said John Demus, Assistant Secretary of State Security at the US Department of Justice.
Heo Gyeongju reporter [email protected]
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