North Korea and Crypto: Is the Regime Responsible for Major Hacks?

The intense - and very likely government-sponsored - North Korean hacking activity is both a weapon aiming to generate pressure on the opponent counties and a means of gathering economic resources.

Experts reported North Korean have used distributed denial-of-service attacks against South Korean targets since July 2009, while, during the following year, hackers focused on the banking industry and international entities.

Media first reported suspicions about the involvement of the North Korean espionage structure in the security breach of the South Korean exchange Bithumb, with the theft of about $7 million in cryptocurrency, which took place in February 2017.In May 2017, the infamous ransomware labeled WannaCry hit thousands of computers in 150 countries.

Despite some sources connecting the malware to Chinese hackers, the White House officially attributed the cyberattack to the North Korean regime in December 2017.After the ransomware campaign, since Summer 2017, North Korean hackers seemed to intensify their activity against South Korean fintech industry, raising the concern of the Korea Internet and Security Agency.

A more recent report from the same source accounts claims that $2 billion in crypto was stolen by North Korean hackers from banks and crypto exchanges, which comes to 7% of the annual GDP of the country.

Let your mind go; let yourself be freeThe true goal of the North Korean hackers is probably double-faced: On the one hand, their attacks aim to undermine the IT infrastructures of countries perceived as rivals.

The North Korean case shows how tortuous would be the path to transfer and convert in fiat the crypto coming from local mining or illicit activities.

North Korean hackers appear to experience some of the hardships that affected licit crypto activities in terms of privacy and adoption.

Despite its actual economic outcomes, the North Korean case is probably the most extreme example of a regime approaching cryptocurrencies to pursue the same advantages at a governmental level that it denies to its citizens at an individual level.

On the other hand, cryptocurrencies were born out of freedom while the North Korean case clearly shows how they could become a manageable weapon in the hands of a totalitarian regime.