North Korean hackers behind $307 million DMM Bitcoin heist, FBI says

A notorious North Korean hacking group was revealed to be behind $307 million in Bitcoin being stolen from Japan-based exchange DMM Bitcoin in May, according to a Kyodo News report.

A notorious North Korean hacking group was revealed to be behind $307 million in Bitcoin being stolen from Japan-based exchange DMM Bitcoin in May, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

The FBI said Monday that the hacker group was identified as TraderTraitor, a hacking group allegedly run by the North Korean government, after a joint investigation with Japan's National Police Agency.

The police tracked the flow of stolen Bitcoin to an account managed by TraderTraitor, according to the report, and found that the perpetrator breached the exchange's wallet management system by planting malware. It falsified transaction amounts as well as the destinations of remittances.

The police, however, failed to specify individual suspects from the group.

DMM Bitcoin suffered an unauthorized leakage of funds worth 48.2 billion yen ($307 million) on May 31 and announced that it would go out of business on Dec. 2. It stands as the second largest cryptocurrency theft case in Japan's history, in terms of amount, after Coincheck's 58 billion yen loss in 2018.

TraderTraitor, a group that started operating in April 2022, is suspected to be a part of the Lazarus hacking group allegedly sponsored by the North Korea’s Reconnaissance General Bureau.

This is the first time that harm by the group was confirmed in Japan.

The UN Security Council Sanctions Committee on North Korea said in a March report that it is investigating 58 cyberattacks alleged to be committed by North Korean hackers, who raked in over $3 billion from cryptocurrency firms.

Chainalysis, a New York-based blockchain analysis firm, said in a recent report that North Korea-linked hackers snatched $1.34 billion through a total of 47 cyberattacks this year alone.

BY SARAH CHEA,LEE HAY-JUNE [chea.sarah@joongang.co.kr]