Chosuna Ha Tae-keung, a well-known South Korean opposition politician, says North Korean hackers have stolen nearly $ 310 million worth of cryptocurrencies in the past two years.
Chosuna Ha Tae-keung: North Korea stole $ 310 billion in cryptocurrencies
Chosun Ha Tae-keung, former head of the New Conservative Party and now MP of the country’s main opposition force, the People’s Power Party, spoke about the hacking attacks on cryptocurrency users.
He said that in addition to 35 intrusions identified by the UN in 2019, the country experienced more attacks from North Korean hackers. Cybercriminals reportedly stole cryptocurrencies and tokens worth $ 310 million in the last two years. Koreans from South Korea were the victims. Behind the hackers was the Kim regime.
Ha Tae-keung added that North Korean criminals also successfully launched attacks against the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), a government intelligence unit tasked with carrying out activities against hackers.
Gina Kim, an IT security expert from Seoul, said Cryptonews.comwhat the situation looks like from her perspective.
– While it’s true that cryptocurrency exchanges were once viewed as a low-hanging fruit, with loose security protocols and money lying in hot wallets, a lot has changed over the past few years. Some exchanges now have very good security measures and well-trained staff. Therefore, most attackers now target customers themselves with sophisticated spear phishing, voice phishing, or social engineering. I can’t make it clear if these attackers are from North Korea or not, but they certainly speak mostly Korean – she said.
President with a sledgehammer to hackers
Ha admitted that he would run for president. He said that if he were elected to office, he would transform KISA into a body much more dangerous to hackers. He explained that the agency should be consolidated and directly subordinated to the president’s office.
He added that cryptocurrencies worth “Million dollars” were stolen from “citizens’ wallets”While the government did little to counter it. Ha said such incidents damaged South Korea’s international reputation.
– I will make South Korea the most secure country in the region, protecting it from cybercrime threats, including hackers – he promissed.
Cryptocurrencies through the magnifying glass of the authorities
The country’s authorities are looking more closely at the cryptocurrency exchange market. South Korean police have even said recently that they fear the V Global cryptocurrency exchange may be a “center of a fraud network”. It is a case of embezzlement of as much as USD 2 billion. The policemen had already intervened in the stock exchange office. Service fortressthat the scale of the fraud could affect approximately 52,000 customers. They report that the platform has been investigated for several months after a group of investors announced that it was unable to withdraw funds from it.
