NORTH KOREA
Bursting the Bubble
South Korean intelligence operatives are looking into the possibility that North Korean hackers were responsible for last month’s theft of about $500 million worth of digital coins from Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck Inc.
Bloomberg quoted an unnamed South Korean lawmaker as saying the spy agency has recognized similarities between the methods used in the theft and previous cyber attacks originating from the North.
Cybersecurity experts say Pyongyang has increasingly used such heists to fund its nuclear weapons program and circumvent international sanctions. South Korean investigators are also looking at Pyongyang for the hack of Seoul-based exchange Youbit, which collapsed in December.
That said, they have little or no hard evidence to connect North Korean hackers to the Coincheck heist – the biggest such theft since the 2014 disappearance of about $470 million worth of Bitcoins from the Mt. Gox exchange.
For unrelated causes, Bitcoin dropped below $7,000 this week – down more than 66% since reaching an all-time high in December.
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