North Korean hackers using stolen crypto to mine more crypto via cloud services: Report
Mar 28. 2023
By Derek Andersen
Cybersecurity firm Mandiant has “graduated” a new group of hackers who finance state goals and their own existence with the help of crypto laundering.
The North Korean cybercrime operator APT43 is using cloud computing to launder cryptocurrency, a report from cybersecurity service Mandiant has found. According to the researchers, the North Korean group uses “stolen crypto to mine for clean crypto.”
Mandiant, a Google subsidiary, has been tracking the North Korean Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) group since 2018 but has only now “graduated” the group to an independent identity. Mandiant characterized the group as a “major player” that often cooperated with other groups.
Although its main activity was spying on South Korea, Mandiant found that APT43 was likely engaged in raising funds for the North Korean regime and funding itself through its illicit operations. Apparently the group has been successful in those pursuits:
“APT43 steals and launders enough cryptocurrency to buy operational infrastructure in a manner aligned with North Korea’s juche state ideology of self-reliance, therefore reducing fiscal strain on the central government.”
The researchers detected the North Korean group’s “likely use of hash rental and cloud mining services to launder stolen cryptocurrency into clean cryptocurrency.”
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