It said the funds were stolen by a hacking group believed to belong to the Lazarus Group, which is reportedly backed by Pyongyang authorities.
A North Korean hacking group stole cryptocurrency worth more than $300 million from a Japan-based exchange called DMM Bitcoin, Japanese police and the FBI of the United States said.
According to Japan’s National Police Agency, the heist was conducted by the group TraderTraitor, believed to be a subgroup of Lazarus Group, which is accused of having connections with the Pyongyang authorities.
Lazarus Group rose to notoriety about ten years ago after being blamed for hacking into Sony Pictures in apparent revenge for “The Interview,” a movie that made fun of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
In a separate statement dated Monday, the FBI detailed “the theft of cryptocurrency worth $308 million US dollars from the Japan-based cryptocurrency company DMM by North Korean cyber actors”.
It described a “targeted social engineering” operation where a hacker pretended to be a recruiter on LinkedIn to contact an employee of a different crypto wallet software company.
They sent the employee what appeared to be a pre-employment test, which contained a malicious line of code. The FBI said that was enough for the hacker to compromise their system and impersonate the employee.
