North Korea Stole at Least $659 Million in Cryptocurrency Last Year

The US is blaming North Korea for stealing at least $659 million in cryptocurrency last year and warning that the country’s hackers will inevitably strike again. 

On Tuesday, the US State Department, South Korea, and Japan issued a rare joint statement highlighting the lengths North Korean hackers will go to target the blockchain industry. 

The crypto heists from North Korea pose a “significant threat to the integrity and stability of the international financial system,” the statement warns.

The countries also say that North Korean hackers were behind at least five heists at cryptocurrency exchanges and financial platforms last year, resulting in the theft of $659 million. The largest occurred at DMM Bitcoin, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, which reported losing $308 million to North Korean hackers in May.  

The hackers pulled off the heist by pretending to be recruiters on LinkedIn. One of them tricked an employee at a Japanese cryptocurrency wallet software company into participating in a job test that actually installed malware on their computer. The malware then paved the way for the North Korean hackers to rig a cryptocurrency transaction request for a DMM Bitcoin employee, sending 4,502.9 in Bitcoin to the attacker’s wallets. 

In Tuesday’s warning, the US says it’s continued to observe North Korean hackers harnessing social engineering tactics, such as impersonation, to trick victims into installing Windows or Mac-based malware. In addition, North Korean hackers have also used identity theft to apply for remote IT jobs, giving them another way to infiltrate cryptocurrency-related companies. In response, the joint statement urges blockchain companies and freelance work industries to bolster their vetting processes to avoid inadvertently hiring North Korean IT workers.

The statement doesn’t offer a major solution to the North Korean hacker threat, except to say that “deeper collaboration among the public and private sectors of the three countries is essential to proactively” stopping the hacking schemes. In 2019, a UN report estimated that North Korean hackers had already stolen an estimated $2 billion from banks and cryptocurrency projects to help fund the country’s nuclear weapons program.