North Korea Accused in Crypto Heists

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The Justice Department un- sealed an indictment on Wednesday against two alleged members of North Korea’s mil- itary intelligence services, ac- cusing them of hacking banks and companies in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., as part of a wide-ranging scheme to steal $L3 billion over the past half-decade for Pyongyang.

North Korean hackers are increasingly focusing their criminal activity on the world of cryptocurrency and recently built malicious cryptocurrency apps, launched ransomware attacks and promoted a fraud- ulent initial coin offering in pursuit of digital cash, prose- cutors said.

The charged Jon Chang Hyok and Kim Il with the hacking and related fraud. A third man, Park Jin Hyok, who is also named in the indictment, was previously charged in a Sep- tember 2018 case that accused him of playing a role in the 2016 theft of $81 million from Bangladesh’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the 2014 Sony Pic- tures hack, among other intra- sions indictment new.

The hackers allegedly sent spear-phishing emails to em- ployees at the State and De- fense departments and several US. technology companies in January and February 2020, and at times traveled to and worked from Russia and China, the indictment said.

The charges chronicle a criminal moneymaking opera tion that mirrored the general public’s increasing interest in digital currencies, as bitcoin topped the $50,000 mark.

“North Korea’s operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of stacks of cash, have become the world’s leading bank robbers,” said John Demers, the head of the Justice Department’s na- tional security division.