According to the U.S. cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, North Korean hackers have stolen approximately $3 billion in cryptocurrency since 2017, with over half of that amount stolen in the past year.
Recorded Future revealed in a recent report that the amount of cryptocurrency stolen is equivalent to about half of North Korea’s total military expenditure for the year:
North Korean threat actors are accused of stealing an estimated $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency in just 2022, an amount roughly equivalent to about 5% of North Korea’s economy or 45% of its military budget.
Furthermore, the stolen funds exceed the total annual income from the country’s exports by a significant margin. The report states: “This sum is nearly ten times the value of North Korea’s exports in 2021, which stood at $182 million.”
Meanwhile, Recorded Future explains that North Korean hackers initially targeted South Korea due to its cryptocurrency holdings before expanding their targets to the rest of the world:
North Korean hackers shifted their focus from traditional financial markets to this new realm of digital finance, initially targeting South Korea’s cryptocurrency market before significantly broadening their scope globally.
It is worth noting that support from the North Korean government has led to a significant expansion in the scale of these illicit activities.
The report claims: “State sponsorship has enabled North Korean hackers to expand the scale of their operations far beyond what would be possible for traditional cybercriminals.”
In recent news, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the cryptocurrency mixing service Sinbad, accusing the platform of facilitating money laundering for the North Korean-based Lazarus Group.