CNAS: “Lazarus Group has become an army of cybercriminals”

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) reported that a North Korean hacker group has turned into a “skilled army of cybercriminals” that has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.

North Korean hacker group Lazarus “continues to adapt its cybercrime tactics” to attack companies from the financial and cryptocurrency sectors, according to a CNAS report. According to the report, the Lazarus Group has evolved from “a rogue hacking team into a skilled army of cybercriminals and foreign affiliates” who have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies.

The authors of the report cite the hack of the Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin, behind which is the Lazarus Group, as an example. The hacker attack brought $300 million in losses to the platform:

“This large-scale attack included a number of sophisticated hacking and money laundering methods, including using mixing services and new DeFi platforms in an attempt to hide their activities. Although the hackers used different bitcoin addresses to move the stolen money, they still combined them into several clusters, which made it easier to link their ownership to one source.”

Increasingly, Western organizations are reporting North Korea’s involvement in hacking cryptocurrency companies. In early February, the UN posted a report stating that North Korea has accelerated the development of tactical and nuclear missiles, and hacking of cryptocurrency exchanges and services has become one of the main sources of funding for these developments.

In January, analytics firm Chainalysis reported that North Korean hackers stole $400 million in crypto last year, with 58% of that amount stolen in ETH. Last year, South Korean publications Newsis and Chosun reported that hackers from North Korea had hacked numerous cryptocurrency exchanges over five years and stole $1.7 billion worth of assets.