The U.S. Justice Department announced charges against three North Korean citizens it said were involved in attempts by two hacking groups to extort about $1.3 billion from victims in the banking, financial, entertainment and cryptocurrency world.
The hackers — tied to groups that were behind a 2014 attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. — used phishing messages to try to get victims to download malicious code, the Justice Department said in a statement on Wednesday.
Central to the North Koreans’ campaign was a new family of cryptocurrency malware, including proliferation of their own token, which included a backdoor used to infiltrate victims.
North Korea hackers “have become the world’s leading bank robbers,” John Demers, head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, told reporters on a conference call. “Simply put, the regime has become a criminal syndicate with a flag, which harnesses its state resources to steal hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Demers called on China and Russia, two countries that have a long history of working with North Korea, “to take action” to rein in Pyongyang. He said the hackers operated out those countries as well as North Korea.
In the briefing, Justice Department officials said the hackers were linked to North Korea’s military intelligence service. They described a shadowy organization — known as the Lazarus Group and APT38.
Although long in the works, the indictment is the first major action by the Biden administration against North Korea, which is under a wide range of punishing economic sanctions over its nuclear program. Former President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on three occasions, but Kim’s regime never stopped building its nuclear stockpile and ballistic missile technology.
President Joe Biden’s administration has said it is reviewing all aspects of Trump’s diplomacy with Pyongyang.
Dating back to the 2014 Sony hack, the North Korean groups also targeted Bangladesh’s central bank, Mexico’s Banco Nacional De Comercio Exterior, BankIslami Pakistan Limited and AMC Theaters. Sony was seen as a target because of a film the company produced at the time, “The Interview,” that mocked Kim with a fictional plan to assassinate him.
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