North Korea, Crypto Hacking and the Spy's at war
North Korea has quite the history when it comes to Crypto with a previous Ethereum founder charged with helping North Korea circumvent sanctions and is currently serving 63 months prison in a federal US prison. North Korea managed to net itself a significant amount of Ethereum in the process adding to the nations economy.
According to trading economics North Korea has a total GDP of $US29.6 Billion which isn't much for a population of 26 Million people, which puts it on par with the population of Australia which has over $US1 Trillion GDP.
The sanctions placed on North Korea stem from historical wars and North Korea's advancement in nuclear weapons and continued development of ICBM's that pose a constant risk to neighboring nations and global stability.
North Korea's New Income Stream
North Korea is home to one of the most elaborate coordinated government hacking groups called Lazarus group whom, over the years have participated in sabotage, cyber crimes including espionage, theft and disruption.
The amount of people involved in the operation is unknown and it's actual operations is still very much unknown except that they are active, they are successful and are working in the interests of North Korea.
The group has been increasing it's attacks on Crypto projects and has been successful on taking advantage of exploits in decentralised finance (De-Fi) project codes netting the nations hundreds of millions in US dollars worth of Crypto currency.
Most recently Lazarus Group has been implicated in the $US100 Million Hack of Horizon Bridge which is on top of the $US60 Million worth of Ethereum stolen in 2022.
FBI sets up base
The hacking has become so successful that a team of South Korean Spies and US private investigators have established an operation to fight back against the hack by tracking wallet movements and notifying exchanges as well as banks of when the money is being moved, freezing assets and preventing North Korea from accessing the money.
The recent sting only prevented $US1 Million from being liquidated into US dollars and the vast majority of the funds still remain as Crypto Currency which require constant monitoring and action to prevent the communist nation from liquidating the funds and boosting it's own wealth, which has been utilised in the development of Nuclear Missiles.
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