Seoul’s sanctions target individuals suspected of having ties to the Lazarus organization. The individuals affected by the measures included Park Jin-hyeok, the head of Chosun Expo, which allegedly serves as a front for Lazarus.
“These are the first cybersecurity sanctions against North Korea by the South Korean government. We hope that what is happening will alert the world to the risk of virtual asset trading with North Korea.”
announced South Korean Foreign Ministry.
In early February, the United Nations reported in a report that North Korean hackers stole more crypto assets in 2022 than any other year. UN analysts have found North Korean hackers responsible for stealing between $630 million and more than $1 billion in crypto assets last year after attacking foreign aerospace and defense networks.
The UN experts said that North Korean hackers have begun to use more ingenious schemes to steal funds, which has made it much more difficult to trace stolen crypto assets.
In January, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation claimed that Lazarus were involved in the massive hack of the Harmony One gateway that occurred in mid-2022. Approximately $60 million of stolen assets were exchanged on Ethereum using the RAILGUN anonymization protocol. Some of the stolen funds were frozen thanks to the efforts of the Binance and Huobi exchanges.
Source: Bits
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