North Korea arrests state-trained hackers over bank attacks

Homepage > News > Business > North Korea arrests state-trained hackers over bank attacks North Korean authorities have reportedly arrested a criminal organization of former state cyber operators and IT specialists accused of hacking two state banks and laundering stolen funds through digital assets. Last week, South Korean outlet Daily NK reported that the group in question allegedly hacked the internal networks of North Korea’s central bank and the Foreign Trade Bank—the institution responsible for North Korea’s currency issuance and state fund management and the core bank responsible for foreign settlements and foreign currency transactions, respectively—converting stolen state funds into digital asset before laundering them through China-based brokers. Citing an anonymous “Pyongyang city source,” the report said these two institutions, which together make up the heart of North Korean finance, were breached by “internal IT personnel,” the ringleaders of whom were state-trained veterans of the cyber operations unit of the Reconnaissance General Bureau—North Korea’s intelligence agency. “A criminal organization that hacked into the internal computer networks of the Central...