U.S. Army: About 6,000 hackers are targeting North Korea

Under North Korea’s direction, more than 6,000 hackers operate worldwide, according to the report by the U.S. Army. Most of them are based in Russia, Belarus, China, India and Malaysia.

The hackers are divided into four units, with their operations overseen by the military agency ‘Bureau 121’.

According to the report, North Korea must rely on hackers from other countries due to the lack of IT infrastructure needed for large-scale attacks.

The Bluenoroff Group, a unit specializing in financial cybercrime, including cryptocurrency-related activity, numbers around 1,700 people.

Another about 1,600 hackers belong to the Andarial Group, whose task is to identify vulnerabilities in networks and systems for potential attacks.

The better-known unit is the Lazarus Group. The group has been linked to breaches of several cryptocurrency exchanges and the creation of the WannaCry bitcoin ransomware. Lazarus is tasked with sowing social chaos; the U.S. Army has not been able to determine its exact membership.

In June, Chainalysis analysts concluded that Lazarus was behind the March 2019 breach of the DragonEx cryptocurrency exchange.

In July, Kaspersky Lab experts noted that in 2020 Lazarus hackers intensified targeted attacks on Russian crypto-traders.

Earlier, the UN reported that North Korea laundered money through a blockchain company in Hong Kong.

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