![]() This time, however, the KISA was also able to prevent 10 other exchanges from being victimised from malware contained in malicious emails. Three South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges, Coinis, Bithumb, Youbit, were drained of millions of USD worth of virtual currency in various Lazarus-related cyber attacks. This put ATMs across the country out of action and prevented the news from spreading about it. In 2013, a group tracked as WhoIs - what we now call Lazarus - was responsible for a ‘ logic bomb ’ which wiped the hard drives of at least three banks and two media companies simultaneously. As we speak there will be thousands of spear phishing emails sent to South Korean enterprises, government officials and politicians, and military personnel which if successful enable North Korea’s intelligence gathering forces to collect their desired information. Eventually the DPRK realised there were vast amounts of funds to be made via cyber attacks which could assist them in funding their weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program.ĭue to its proximity, South Korea is still largely on the receiving end of North Korean cyber attacks that persist to this day. The US Secret Service even declared that vast amounts of counterfeit ‘super notes’ were originally manufactured in North Korea. But since Lazarus has been around for a few decades now, this APT is also known as ZINC to Microsoft, or even Bureau 121, the North Korean cyber warfare division, to some.īefore North Korea began achieving serious sums of money via elaborate bank heists and cryptocurrency exchange ransacking, they began earning it through other traditional nefarious methods such as counterfeiting and drug trafficking. Lazarus is also often referred to as HIDDEN COBRA by the US Government generally, which directly refers to any malicious cyber activity which is attributed to North Korea. ![]() However, this group also has several other names from various vendors presenting their differing visibilities of Lazarus’ attacks. The main way security researchers and vendors track North Korean activity is through attributing attacks to the Lazarus advanced persistent threat (APT). ![]() ” - Federal Bureau of Investigation, US Department of Justice.Īlthough it may seem unusual to those outside of the security industry, North Korea presents one of the greatest cyber threats on the global stage, to the financial sector, to critical infrastructure, to multinational conglomerates, and it will employ cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare against the regime's opposition. “The North Korean-based Lazarus Group is a state-sponsored hacking organization responsible for some of the costliest computer intrusions in history, including the cyber attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, a series of attacks targeting banks across the world that collectively attempted to steal more than one billion dollars, and the WannaCry ransomware attack that affected tens of thousands of computer systems across the globe.
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