According to the latest study, North Korean crypto hackers have been associated with the embezzlement of $721 million worth of crypto assets in Japan since 2017, which constitutes a 30% of the overall crypto losses on the planet.
It was revealed that the hacking operations carried out by North Korea’s Lazarus Group have been purposefully devised by the centralized authority of North Korea, to finance the country’s illicit activities including its missile program. Identifying the threat posed to the entire continent, international bodies have initiated adopting safety measures against North Korea’s malpractices.
As per the report of Nikkei Asia, a group of seven finance ministers and central bank governors, on Saturday, addressed the wider cyber atrocities caused by North Korea. The officials asserted in a joint statement that they have thought of and would soon implement security measures to counter the “growing threat from illicit activities by state actors”, recognizing the foul intention of the nation to invent missiles.
The report revealed that as per the analysis of the experts of a UN Security Council panel, North Korea has stolen between $600 million and $1 billion worth of cryptocurrencies in 2022 alone. In addition, the blockchain analytic platform Elliptic found out that a total of $2.3 billion in cryptocurrency has been illegally amassed by the country between 2017 and 2022.
Notably, the largest portion of the crypto hacking activities that the Lazarus Group has executed is connected to Japan, followed by Vietnam, with a loss of $540 million, and the US with a loss of $497 million. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China also witnessed a massive crypto loss as executed by North Korea, amounting to $281 million.
Further, the report stated that out of the types of cyberattacks employed by the Lazarus Group, namely hacking, and ransomware, Elliptic mostly infolded hacking activities that stole cryptocurrencies.
