UN Report: North Korea Cyber Experts Raised Up To $2 Billion

A panel monitoring U.N. sanctions says North Korean cyber experts have illegally raised money for the country’s weapons of mass destruction programs “with total proceeds to date estimated at up to $2 billion.”

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The experts said in a new report to the Security Council that North Korea is using cyberspace “to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks to steal funds from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges to generate income” in violation of sanctions.

Cryptocurrency exchanges deal in virtual money like bitcoin, Ethereum, and Ripple which use a technology called blockchain. There have been some high-profile cryptocurrency exchange heists including a hack reported last month by Tokyo-based Remixpoint, which runs the BITPoint exchange, causing the loss of 3.5 billion yen, or $32 million, worth of virtual money.

The experts’ report said large-scale attacks against cryptocurrency exchanges by North Korea allow the country “to generate income in ways that are harder to trace and subject to less government oversight and regulation than the traditional banking sector.”