US Officials Move to Seize Accounts Affiliated With North Korean Cryptocurrency Theft

On Thursday, United States officials moved to seize 280 cryptocurrency accounts they alleged North Korean hackers used to steal more than $250 million from several cryptocurrency companies around the world, including one based in the US.

North Korean cyberattack network

The United States Justice Department stated that North Korean hackers and their Chinese agents laundered a portion of the money they stole from several virtual currency exchanges using the accounts that were targeted in the civil forfeiture filing. The amount stolen was estimated to be more than $300 million.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department's Criminal Division's Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Rabbitt said that the actions that were taken by the criminals clearly showed the public the inner workings of North Korea's cyber-attack program and the Chinese cryptocurrency money laundering system.

Officials said the filing marks the first incident that an American-based cryptocurrency company being targeted by North Korea has been publicly announced. The Justice Department said that the company focused its efforts on the Algorand blockchain and is referred to in the filing as "Exchange 10."

Thursday's filings show that despite United States President Donald Trump's officials reassure tensions between the US and nuclear-armed North Korea have lowered, Pyongyang is seen by US law enforcement and national security officials as a looming threat to the nation's security and the global financial system.

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The current North Korean government uses the funds it acquired through cyber theft to fund its military and nuclear-weapons development, said several United Nations experts and officials from the United States.

The commander of US Cyber Command, General Paul Nakasone, wrote in a Foreign Affairs article that North Korea has continuously ignored sanctions by conducting cyberattacks on international financial networks and cryptocurrency exchanges so that it could acquire sufficient funds to further its weapons development programs.

Continued disregard for international law

Since 2006, the United National Security Council has imposed sanctions on North Korea in an attempt to cease the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, as reported by Reuters.

A UN report last year wrote that Pyongyang had generated an estimated $2 billion worth of funds that it plans to use for mass destruction programs with the use of its various sophisticated cyberattacks to steal money from several banks and cryptocurrency exchanges.

Experts from the UN said that the cyberattacks on cryptocurrency exchanges had enabled North Korea to amass funds without the oversight that is commonly seen in traditional banking channels.

However, Pyongyang has since denied the allegations of the UN and said the comments were a manipulation of events in an effort to brandish its image as a criminal nation.

According to Forbes, North Korea has an arsenal of more than 6,000 members in its specialized cyber-warfare unit the country has stationed across the world. The Federal Burea of Investigation and other US departments released a joint statement on Wednesday that warned the public that hackers affiliated with the North Korean regime were conducting cybertheft targeting bank accounts from around the world.