DPRK | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Threat actors affiliated with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (also known as North Korea) have plundered at least $600 million in cryptocurrency in 2023. The DPRK "was responsible for almost a third of all funds stolen in crypto attacks last year, despite a 30% reduction from the USD 850 million haul in 2022," blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs  said  last week. "Hacks perpetrated by the DPRK were on average ten times as damaging as those not linked to North Korea." There are indications that  additional breaches  targeting the crypto sector towards the end of 2023 could push this figure higher to around $700 million. The targeting of cryptocurrency companies is not new for North Korean state-sponsored actors, who have  stolen about $3 billion  since 2017. These financially motivated attacks are seen as a crucial revenue-generation mechanism for the sanctions-hit nation, funding its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile pr...

State-sponsored threat actors from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) have been found targeting blockchain engineers of an unnamed crypto exchange platform via Discord with a novel macOS malware dubbed  KANDYKORN . Elastic Security Labs said the activity, traced back to April 2023, exhibits overlaps with the infamous adversarial collective  Lazarus Group , citing an analysis of the network infrastructure and techniques used. "Threat actors lured blockchain engineers with a Python application to gain initial access to the environment," security researchers Ricardo Ungureanu, Seth Goodwin, and Andrew Pease  said  in a report published today. "This intrusion involved multiple complex stages that each employed deliberate defense evasion techniques." This is not the first time the Lazarus Group has leveraged macOS malware in its attacks. Earlier this year, the threat actor was observed distributing a backdoored PDF application that culminated in t...

The U.S. Treasury Department on Friday moved to sanction virtual currency mixer Blender.io, marking the first time a mixing service has been subjected to economic blockades. The move signals continued efforts on the part of the government to prevent North Korea's Lazarus Group from laundering the funds stolen from the  unprecedented hack of Ronin Bridge  in late March. The newly imposed sanctions, issued by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), target 45 Bitcoin addresses linked to Blender.io and four new wallets linked to Lazarus Group, an advanced persistent with ties to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). "Blender was used in processing over $20.5 million of the illicit proceeds," the Treasury  said , adding it was utilized by DPRK to "support its malicious cyber activities and money-laundering of stolen virtual currency." Cryptocurrency mixers, also called  tumblers , are privacy-focused services that allow users to move cr...