While Japan Airlines suffered a cyber attack on December 26 that delayed a significant number of its flights for the day, the outcome of a case that brought down a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange platform was revealed, involving South Korea. North.
In May 2024, the DMM exchange platform, specializing in cryptocurrencies, reported a theft of bitcoins, for a record value of $305 million. The company did not recover, closing its doors a month later, despite a $367 million loan granted to try to rebuild itself: customers burned by the fault and the deadweight loss would not return, pushing the company goes bankrupt.
And so it is in this month of December that we learn more about this affair, thanks to the joint investigation by the Japanese police and the FBI reported by Numerama : the thugs, posing as recruiters on LinkedIn, first approached an employee of Ginco, a company working with DMM. They then moved deeper into the company’s network, stealing more and more employee accounts.
Once they reached the transaction processing system, they observed the system long enough to find multiple vulnerabilities, leading to the May attack and the loss of more than 4,500 bitcoins. But where did they go?
According to the results of the investigation, not so far from the Japanese archipelago: it is the Lazarus pirate group, known to be linked to the North Korean government, which would be responsible for this act of piracy. The country has become a specialist in the field, with $660 million in revenue coming from data theft, ransoms and other cyber-attacks in 2023, and even $1.34 billion in 2024! Record profits going directly into the pocket of the regime in place…
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