Bitcoin theft

North Korean hackers land million-dollar coup

The attackers captured 4502 Bitcoin.(Bild: Grispb)

According to Japanese and US reports, North Korean hackers have stolen digital currencies worth millions. As the Japanese police announced on Tuesday, cryptocurrencies worth more than 300 million dollars (around 288 million euros) were stolen from the Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin.

The crime was committed by the TraderTraitor group. According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), these are "North Korean cyber actors". The group is therefore considered to be part of the hacker group Lazarus, which is most likely controlled by the North Korean state and is held responsible for the hacker attack on the production company Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014, among other things.

In its own statement on Monday (local time), the FBI described the "theft of cryptocurrencies amounting to 308 million dollars" as a "targeted social engineering attack". In such an attack, employees receive malicious files disguised as a job offer, for example.

Impersonating a recruitment agency
According to the report, a hacker posed as a recruiter on the Linkedin platform in order to contact an employee of another company. A supposed recruitment test was sent to this employee - the hackers thus gained access to the company and were then able to impersonate this employee in a request to the crypto exchange DMM in May. This ultimately led to the loss of 4502.9 Bitcoin, which was worth 308 million dollars at the time.

According to the US military in 2020, North Korea already employed around 6,000 hackers at the time, who are said to be organized in a unit called Bureau 121. They are said to operate from several countries.