As Bitcoin Grows in Value, North Korea resolves to Hacking Bitcoin Exchanges

Over the past decade, there have been growing tensions between the two powerful nuclear warheads - America and North Korea - and now with growing rivalry between the top leaders of the two nations, things have reached to a new high. North Korea’s mysterious nuclear ambition has forced several developed nations to distance itself from this often termed as ‘rogue’ nation and share any economic trading activities with the country.

The latest stringent sanctions imposed on North Korea by the United States has posed greater risks and can impede the economic development of the Korean nation. As a result, an increasing number of hackers backed by Kim-Jong-Un’s regime is targeting several exchanges and trying to get their hands on Bitcoin. However, this is not for the first time that such attempts are seen coming from North Korea.

The attempts of Bitcoin hacking or hacking user accounts on exchanges were first noted by FireEye back in 2016. Such attempts continued further in 2017, wherein several cyber attacks have been reported on South Korea’s cryptocurrency exchanges.

While talking to Sky News, Independent Security researcher, Ashley Shen recently said that “We assume one of the reasons why Bitcoin is being attacked is because the price keeps increasing and we think it’s reasonable for hackers (to target). Digital currency might be easier to gain than physical currency. So I think it’s reasonable.”

Security experts say that they have seen attacks coming from various groups with the name Andariel, Lazarus, and Bluenoroff, which are suspected as the front groups coming from North Korea.

Shen further stated that “Before when we tracked nation-state attackers, they usually perform cyber attacks which are aimed at confidential data and intelligence. However recently we’ve discovered that some of the APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) groups are trying to hack financial institutions like banks and Bitcoin exchanges to gain financial profit.”

Shen believes that as Bitcoin continues to grow in value, the attacks will further continue to keep increasing. “My own opinion is they will probably keep doing the Bitcoins because the price keeps increasing and it’s a good investment… So I assume they will do more Bitcoin attacks and of course they will keep targeting banks because that’s what they did before,” said Shen.

Having been isolated due to severe economic sanctions put by the U.S, North Korea is finding it difficult to keep its economy tickling and hence have resorted to such means of hacking Bitcoin exchanges as it buckles under economic pressure.