How does North Korea’s cyber warfare unit Lazarus Group use gains from crypto exchange attacks to its military?

Colleagues, under mounting political and economic pressure from the US – and to lesser extent China and Russia – North Korea’s infamous Lazarus Group appears to have cryptocurrency exchanges in the center of its radar screen. The highly respected Group-IB cyber intelligence firm reports that the DPRK was the source of some 14 cyber attacks targeting cryptocurrencies exchanges during the past one and a half years yielding $571m in illicit digital assets. Allow us to make two rather obvious assumptions: One, the cash-starved North Korean government has no viable exports other than the sale of rogue military hardware. Two, despite its economic deprivation, the DPRK funnels as disproportionate level of the financial resources it does have to the Lazarus Group’s cyber warfare ventures. These assumptions lead us to a fundamental question: How does North Korea use the crypto assets acquired by Lazarus? We believe the answer is two-fold. First, to build and acquire the country’s military arsenal. Second, the widespread and ongoing disinformation campaign needed to prop-up the ill-fated Kim political dynasty. Post a comment while visiting us today! Lawrence – Cyber Security Defender (https://cybersecuritydefender.blogspot.com/)