North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-UN was left embarrassed last Friday when US authorities issued sanctions against 3 North Korean State-funded hacking groups named Lazarus, Bluenoroff and Andariel for launching Global Cyber Attacks to fund Pyongyang’s illicit weapon and missile programs.
A fresh media statement issued by the US says that the above said nefarious digital groups were being funded by Reconnaissance General Bureau- an intelligence authority of North Korea.
Readers of Cybersecurity Insiders have to notify a fact over here that the same intelligence agency is handed over the task of launching cyber attacks on banks, financial institutions, and cryptocurrency outlets to steal currency to fund North Korean nuclear ambitions.
“Bluenoroff and Andariel are two sub-groups of Lazarus Group which penetrate national digital networks to siphon data & currency related to the public interest”, said Sigal Mandelker, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, United States.
Mr. Sigal added that Bluenoroff was caught red-handed stealing currency over $1.1 billion from financial institutions in 2018 and that includes money stolen from banks operating in South Korea, Bangladesh, and India.
Andariel is known to attack the digital infrastructure of the South Korean government to gather intelligence and in Sept’16 was caught hacking into the personal computing device of South Korea’s Defense Minister.
Note- A UN panel of economic experts estimated and released a media statement last month which says that North Korea has acquired over $2 billion through cyberattacks since 2017. However, Kim Jong has denied the news as baseless allegations being circulated by yellow media funded by the United States.
