Bitcoin Forum

Cyber hackers from North Korea have reportedly targeted Bitcoin exchanges in South Korea in retaliation to new sanctions imposed by the United Nations against the hermit state as of late August 2017.

According to South Korea’s Cyber Warfare Research Center, at least one Bitcoin exchange was targeted by a hacking attempt that possibly originated from North Korea.

The assault was allegedly distributed through a dedicated email campaign. If the emails are opened by employees of the targeted exchanges, the attached malware will embed itself in the company's’ computer networks. So far, there are no exact figures on the number of exchanges that were hit by the attack.

https://cointelegraph.com/news/north-korean-hackers-reportedly-attack-bitcoin-exchange-in-south-korea

I remember reading a news article from years back which claimed north korea trains 100 hackers every year:


It wouldn't be that surprising if north korea is investing heavily in some type of electronic warfare program. The entire country is a rat's maze of underground tunnel networks designed to survive a nuclear apocalypse.

You can't really do anything about this though trading volumes in south korea is way above expectations north korea has been causing major issues to the country for a really long time and not just of bitcoin but they are even hacking their automated trains , their high tech country. North korea didn't have much threat to the world before but now this situation keeps getting worse

The North Koreans easily hacked an exchange system in South Korea, this is a clear sign not to save all your crypto currencies in an exchange. The North Koreans easily grab some bitcoin money, which they can use it to build another missile or war weapons.

I guess South Korea ought to sit-up and protect its citizenry financially too by securing their online exchanges so that such flaws wouldn't be exploited by these motivated criminals from the north.

Yes, it's been going on for years that North Korean government allegedly training hackers in preparation of a cyber attack war. And I have read that they are now really targeting South Korean, specially like exchanges and other military institutions. We have even heard that Kim has a lot of bitcoin stash somewhere. This could be true as evident of an attack is proven to be really true by the North Koreans.

 So I guess for the South then, be very careful of any suspicious email and improved the security of your Exchanges to prevent any possible hack for the other side.


That is why we have preached here not to put all your investment in a exchange because first of all you don't have control of the private key and next this kind of scenario, a possible hack that will wipe out all of your funds.

I don't think South Koreans exchanges are not doing anything about it. For sure their government have warned them already to beef up security and we will do really hope they won't be successful in the future. Because this will put a lot of negative news about bitcoin, and we don't want the steam to be halted because of this such event.

Yes, its possible that the hack bitcoin could easily be used to buy or build weapons of mass destruction as we all know that that leader is lunatic and very eager to launch a war specially with the West. Cyber terrorism will be really the latest tool that are are going to see in the future.

This is one of my fears when I have coins in an exchange because we never know what will happen. It has happened before and there is a possibility it might happen again (I hope not) but to reduce the risk, we should only put coins in an exchange that we can afford to lose and then have the security features maximized so as to prevent something like that happening.

I have also read somewhere that if you wanted to be more secure then you can have a separate gadget intended only for crypto. Your only purpose for using that gadget is for trading or for other things that is related to crypto and nothing else. You will access all other activities except crypto in other gadgets like emails, games, watching movies etc.

This is ridiculous. Why should the government backed hackers in North Korea attack a private entity in South Korea (instead of attacking some of the government owned banks)? Also even if they manage to steal the BTC, how they are going to convert them to fiat in North Korea?

This fact proves that North Korea is one of the most dangerous countries, because it could be for the next time not just the South Korea exchange being targeted but also in other countries that have bad relations with it, it becomes a lesson for us not to put a large amount of our funds too long on the exchange, and perhaps decentralized exchange can be another option for this.

That is very counterproductive on North Korea's part. In my own opinion, if North Korea really wanted to go around those economic sanctions, they should start hoarding and getting involved in all aspects of cryptocurrencies themselves. Especially the mining aspect.

Bitcoin is a powerful tool for peer to peer, decentralized and censorship resistant value transfer. If Kim Jong Un had any brains, he should form a research group just for cryptocurrencies and how to utilize them for the good of their country.

If this is indeed true, it’s not that surprising since that wannacry ransomware from a few months ago was believed to have originated from  North Korea as well. On top of that, they are launching missiles every now and then. Such a dysfunctional country with so much bad publicity, largely because of their leader who acts like a clown.

We don't know for sure whether the government was behind the attack or even if it originated in North Korea. And from their perspective, why restrict attacks to government entities, if economic warfare can weaken the state?

They have no need to convert the BTC if this was government-sponsored. The object would be either a) economic warfare, b) accumulate BTC, or c) both.

Hmm. Good question. Possibly using offshore bank accounts? They still probably couldn't convert that country's currency to North Korean Won though, since I don't think foreign money exchanges even support NKW. Though I don't think converting it to NKW would matter if it really was government funded.

With that said, South Korea surely needs to step up their game. North Korea is pretty much toying with them.

I heard that almost all of the identified North Korean offshore bank accounts are frozen (as a result of the UN sanctions). Converting BTC to fiat using these accounts would be very risky for the North Koreans. The FBI can trace these transactions and it will result in the funds getting seized.

This is what I am talking about what I talk about the risk on investing and buying Bitcoins. The number one risk of all, hackers. First of all, it is hard to avoid and secure Bitcoin wallet accounts from hackers if they already got in to your computer system. And from there, they can easily find the access for others especially thos who are nearby. It only takes them a matter of time to instantly transfer your Bitcoins into their account if they already got in to the system by first determining your IP address. I learned this from an IT expert friend way back in high school.

North Korean are doing all sorts of stupid things. These are all expected from the people and its country from leaders down to the people. The sad thing is that the government seems to be the one in charge of all these. The leaders, I mean, the leader--they only have one god kim-- are putting the country. But I don't think this is true.

Just crazy. Are they running out of money to build nukes? That's what happens when you mismanage your country. They have resources to build nukes and launch cyber attacks but can't do anything about... about EVERYTHING else. They allow in the Chinese to mine their resources so they can buy food from China.

You think they're planning to use those stolen bitcoins to buy stuff? I mean, it's pointless to convert it to fiat in North Korea. Maybe they'll use it to buy stuff from China? That's pretty much the only place they can buy physical items using bitcoins.

If it became known that hackers from North Korea that means it is bad hackers. I think that politics intervened. Now those who benefits to accuse North Korea, and those who benefit from another thing blamed Russia. Hackers have no nationality. They attack from anywhere.

I don't buy it. What's the total count of computers that connect into Internet in North Korea? (AFAIK it was only 4).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_North_Korea#Service_providers_and_access

I think it's not N.Koreans, it's Chineese...

We are not talking about the money-minded hackers, who either operate individually or in groups. We are talking about groups of hackers, who are funded by the government agencies. All the major nations have such hacker armies, including Russia, United States, China, and North Korea.

That's actually a good deal. It'll give us a little bit of pressure, and that's the kind of thing that keeps
Bitcoin to moving. It's hard to sell it such prices when there's no out there that wants to buy, but even though you create a fear-based economy it's still creates movement in the economy if that's what we need right now. Let Bunch people get scared drop their Bitcoin just fine by us.

I always thought that the korean and chines people are intelligent :D
But is no good exploit their mind for doing attacks, and maybe stole people moneys
Need to exploit their minds for something more helpful

Don't buy it either.
I think that North Korea would have other priorities when hacking something in South Korea.
Basically everything military or something from the public infrastructure.
The only scenario I can think of that this makes sense is that private hacker did that. But then it makes no difference if they came from North Korea or from anywhere else in the world.
They made it just for the money.

is this news real? because if it is, it only means that even old computers can be used effectively for hacking.  We all know that sokor is years or even decades advance in technology when it compared to nokor, and surely their security is their first priority since anytime their neighbor nokor could attack them if they feel it. I think this news, came from someone who lost their bitcoins, and blaming it on nokor, since bitcoin exchanges though it can be hacked, it would take a very very long time and groups of very well trained hackers that could know how to infiltrate the stock market and change the amounts, in other words it is very hard but not impossible, and since that is he case, why would you waste time to attack an exchange if you could go ahead and scam just anybody, this news  is hardly believable, you will need a very advance technology, which i doubt nokor has. I think, nokor should really open its boundaries and show the world what it really has, and not just say that they are advance, i think they are just bluffing and there is just some kind of glitch on the part of the sokor exchange, and they are capitalizing on it so they can be threatened, we need to be more vigilant when it comes to news like this since nokor is already conisidered a terrorist since, they are planning to start a nuclear war with USA.

Those lunatics. That is why I do not like North Korea. They are trying to do nonsense things to prove that they are strong. But in fact, they have nothing. Most of the citizen in the country is still very poor but the government keeps using the money to develop nuclear. They are insane

I think North Korea wants to have some fun but I will never make a mistake to underestimate them. Man, those little creatures have even shut up the great America. Though it appears to be stupid attacking your neighbors but we don't know their intentions. Stay aware!
BTW, poverty is also found in America so don't make a fuss.

This looks like a carry over of the ideological divide between the two countries.