The Maxima Behind the Ape: North Korea, Hackers, and Cryptocurrencies

According to Odaily news today, the blockchain security team MistTrack tweeted that North Korean hackers are cleaning Atomic Wallet stolen funds.

This kind of news is not new. North Korean hackers can make headlines in the encryption industry several times a month. Whenever there is an attack with a huge amount of money, Lazarus Group, the name of the mysterious North Korean hacker organization, is always involved. According to an annual report released by the U.S. National Security Council in April, North Korean hackers stole more than $3 billion in virtual assets.

In the world of the Chinese Internet, the name North Korea is always accompanied by backwardness, closedness, and endless stalks such as "a great man descended from heaven" and "Dapudong Cannon". — Today, when Internet users around the world are keen on surfing, most North Koreans still cannot find their steam account, let alone their wallet address.

Of course, the North Korean people still have their own entertainment, and even though Racing Pyongyang was released in 2012, I still feel a sense of nostalgia across the millennium. (The picture below is "Pyongyang Racing")

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Ask for help or ask for yourself?

In fact, North Korea’s enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies has continued unabated compared to the “Southern Puppets”, but this enthusiasm comes more from the officialdom—in 2017, Pyongyang University of Science and Technology opened courses related to blockchain , and invited relevant practitioners to teach courses. Since 2018, Pyongyang has held cryptocurrency and blockchain conferences every year. Virgil Griffith of the Ethereum Foundation has also traveled to North Korea to participate in blockchain conferences, incarnating a virtual "Maximum" North Korean hackers frequently appear in accident reports of exchange thefts (mostly South Korean exchanges), and there are even meme coins themed on the North Korean space program, although the last update of the official Twitter stays in 2021.

Although the outside world has been rumored that North Korea is conducting large-scale mining activities, it is certain that North Korea does not join this new wave of web3.0 as a miner—although North Korea has abundant coal resources, The foundation of its chemical industry and energy industry was deeply influenced by the Economic Cooperation Conference of the Soviet Union - mainly based on the petroleum system. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the lack of oil resources and the shortage of technology made North Korea rely on hydropower and thermal power to generate electricity.

North Korea, which has not broken through the level of power generation in 1990, is more inclined to spend electricity on important fields such as industry, medical care, and various theme towers in various places. It is impossible and unnecessary to replicate the phenomenon of mining in North Korea, and it is impossible for the Central Committee of the Labor Party to support "the great cause of the encryption world under the leadership of the dear leader" in this way.

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The Attacking "Archbishop"

Among them, the most well-known is Lazarus, a hacker organization affiliated to Bureau 121 of the General Investigation Bureau and using the name of the archbishop in "Diablo" as its code name. It single-handedly planned the Sony Pictures hacking incident in 2014 and the 2016 Bangladesh bank robbery, "WannaCry" ransomware, "Dark Seoul"... etc., and their names also appear in news broadcasts where the project party was attacked: Harmony, Kucoin, Ronin ...and of course, Atomic these days.

Looking at previous attacks, the South Korean exchange has undoubtedly become the most valued "target".

Back in early 2017, Bithumb was robbed of $7 million by their northern neighbor. At the beginning of 2019, the United Nations cited the Group IB report and accused Lazarus of creating five cryptocurrency thefts, targeting Yapizon (Korea, with a loss of 3,816 BTC, or $5.3 million), Coinis (Korea, with an unknown loss), YouBit (Korea , lost 17% of assets), Coincheck (Japan, lost 523 million NEM, or 534 million US dollars), Bithumb (Korea, lost 32 million US dollars), the total profit of the five attacks was as high as 571 million US dollars.

This method has become an important source of income since North Korea was sanctioned in 2006, and decentralization has played a huge role in the face of Western siege and interception-although physical exchanges can be frozen due to "relevant regional laws and regulations" accounts (as Coinbase et al. did with Russia), but obviously, not all exchanges are based in the US, and private transactions have not stopped since the beginning.

Based on the situation on the peninsula and the statement made at the Sixth Political Conference of the Eighth Labor Party, a large part of these important foreign exchange earnings will be invested in "immediately strengthening and developing more powerful material means to effectively suppress the US's hostile behavior towards North Korea." "Deliberate in a timely manner whether it is necessary to restart all activities suspended during the period." The core idea still adheres to the "military and diplomatic guarantee" in the eight new guidelines.

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US-North Korea relations in the block

It is not an easy task to get rid of North Korea's isolated island status in the world. Due to the complexity of the peninsula's geopolitics, the core guiding ideology of all actions is from the perspective of "security". Try to normalize political life while ensuring its own existence, transfer power from the army to the Workers' Party, and promote economic development at the same time. This is the main political appeal of Kim Jong-un during his reign. Still on US-North Korea relations.

But for now, at least when it comes to cryptocurrencies, the attitudes of the two sides have never eased-in February 2021, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted three North Korean hackers affiliated with the Reconnaissance General Bureau of the Korean People’s Army, accusing them of "Theft of over $1.3 billion in cash and cryptocurrencies". Just two months ago, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned three North Koreans who supported Lazarus and were responsible for "facilitating" Lazarus.

In any case, for North Korea, Crypto has indeed helped them evade the sanctions of hostile regimes, and at the same time provided new economic assistance for the country, although there is no news that North Korea is involved in any investment in the primary market (after all, directly It is still faster than investing), but in the future there will likely be institutions from official backgrounds, and maybe soon we will see a group of young people with leaders’ heads on their chests sitting and discussing with the project team, talking about things like DA, on-chain ecology and Other industry-related topics.

In the final stage of the election campaign, Yin Xiyue used NFT to obtain the votes of young Koreans. Although North Korea cannot directly follow this behavior, perhaps behind the countless transaction data of Opensea, the great man from Mount Paektu has privately Buying a monkey avatar, let yourself step into the alpha club?

Maybe on the day when the North-South dialogue resumes, the two can discuss how to save gas fees at the Blue House.