Albuquerque Journal

N. Korea said to have stolen a fortune in online bank heists

Hacking operations stealing money said to be continuing

- ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON — North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests have stopped, but its hacking operations to gather intelligen­ce and raise funds for the sanction-strapped government in Pyongyang may be gathering steam.

U.S. security firm FireEye raised the alarm Wednesday over a North Korean group that it says has stolen hundreds of millions of dollars by infiltrati­ng the computer systems of banks around the world since 2014 through highly sophistica­ted and destructiv­e attacks that have spanned at least 11 countries. It says the group is still operating and poses “an active global threat.”

It is part of a wider pattern of malicious statebacke­d cyber activity that has led the Trump administra­tion to identify North Korea — along with Russia, Iran and China — as one of the main online threats facing the United States. Last month, the Justice Department charged a North Korean hacker said to have conspired in devastatin­g cyberattac­ks, including an $81 million heist of Bangladesh’s central bank and the WannaCry virus that crippled parts of Britain’s National Health Service.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of the use of malware by Hidden Cobra, the U.S. government’s byword for North Korea hackers, in fraudulent ATM cash withdrawal­s from banks in Asia and Africa.

It said that Hidden Cobra was behind the theft of tens of millions of dollars from teller machines in the past two years. In one incident this year, cash had been simultaneo­usly withdrawn from ATMs in 23 different countries, it said.

North Korea, which prohibits access to the world wide web for virtually all its people, has previously denied involvemen­t in cyberattac­ks, and attributio­n for such attacks is rarely made with absolute certainty.

It is typically based on technical indicators such as the Internet Protocol, or IP, addresses that identify computers and characteri­stics of the coding used in malware, which is the software a hacker may use to damage or disable computers.

But other cybersecur­ity experts tell The Associated Press that they also see continued signs that North Korea’s authoritar­ian government, which has a long track record of criminalit­y to raise cash, is conducting malign activity online.

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