“North Korea stole about 89% of this year’s global crypto hack losses”

[Financial News] An analysis has estimated that North Korea stole about 89% of the value lost to crypto hacks worldwide this year.
On the 30th (local time), blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said this, identifying North Korea as being behind a hack worth around 8 trillion won at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The share of total losses from crypto hacks believed to be linked to North Korea was 15% in 2021. It rose to 89% this year, almost sixfold. The average loss per hack believed to have been carried out by North Korea also surged, from $50.65 million (about 67.6 billion won) in 2021 to $185.65 million (about 248 billion won) this year.
On the 29th, Chainalysis also attributed to North Korea the theft of $6.4 billion (about 8.5491 trillion won) from Binance. The incident at Binance was “the largest theft in the history of crypto assets,” and the North Korea-linked cybercrime group TraderTraitor was behind it. TraderTraitor has targeted cryptocurrency exchanges including Bitget, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, and investors to raise funds for the North Korean regime.
Chainalysis said it had found evidence that funds stolen from Binance were mixed on-chain with funds stolen from Bitget last month, and explained that this was the basis for its assessment that North Korea was responsible. The funds stolen from Binance reportedly moved repeatedly between multiple wallets through thousands of transactions in a short period. Chainalysis analyzed that this transaction flow suggested an automated program may have been used to make the stolen funds’ movement more difficult to trace.
North Korea has reportedly stolen vast sums over the past five years using crypto hacks and money-laundering methods like these. From 2021 through October 29 this year, losses from crypto hacks worldwide totaled $22.34 billion (about 30 trillion won), of which about $13.24 billion (about 18 trillion won), or 59%, was linked to North Korea.

[email protected] Kang Gu-gwi Reporter