‘North Korea-linked’ hackers purportedly made off with at least $630 million in cryptocurrency in 2022, sanctions monitoring agents have indicated in a report to the United Nations Security Council.
“A higher value of cryptocurrency assets was stolen by DPRK actors in 2022 than in any previous year,” agents wrote, using the acronym for the country’s official name – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The report, to be made public either later this month or sometime in March, said that the $630 million figure was based on South Korean estimates. However, a cybersecurity firm cited by the monitors estimated that North Korean actors may actually have made off with over $1 billion in crypto. “The techniques used by cyber threat actors have become more sophisticated, thus making tracking stolen funds more difficult,” the report indicated.
Pyongyang was also accused of using “increasingly sophisticated cyber techniques both to gain access to digital networks involved in cyber finance, and to steal information of potential value, including to its weapons programs,” including through the use of phishing campaigns.
The report attributed hack attacks and crypto theft to the Reconnaissance General Bureau, a North Korean intelligence agency responsible for clandestine operations abroad.
Along with China, Russia and Iran, North Korea has become a favorite bogeyman for both Western governments and corporations when it comes to claims about malevolence online. North Korea was accused of hacking Sony Pictures in 2014 (with verifiable evidence never provided to this day), and a long list of other ransomware schemes, heists and scams.
Pyongyang has consistently denied the cyber-related allegations against them, and denounced the United States itself as a “hacking empire” built on “intelligence theft” that abuses cyberspace in pursuit of global hegemony.
“The American despicable acts of publicizing the sophistries of our ‘cyber-attack’ and cryptocurrency theft’ are intended to tarnish the prestige of our state, as well as for seriously threatening and challenging our sovereignty. Therefore, we will never overlook these acts,” North Korea’s Foreign Ministry wrote in a response to the release of a similar ‘cryptocurrency theft’ report last year.
Pyongyang has yet to respond to the claims made in the latest report.