[Iclickart]
SEOUL, Feb. 05 (Aju News) -- North Korean hackers are suspected of having launched a cyber attack on South Korean virtual money exchanges to steal cryptocurrencies and at least one exchange suffered a substantial damage last year, the South's main spy agency said Monday in a report to parliament.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) told a parliamentary intelligence committee that North Korean hackers have attacked cryptocurrency exchanges, according to Kim Byung-ki, a ruling Democratic Party legislator who participated in the committee's closed session.
NIS officials were quoted as saying that in one attack last year, North Korean hackers sent hacking e-mails to an unnamed virtual currency in South Korea to steal passwords of clients and took away virtual money worth tens of billions won by using the technology of a famous security company to neutralize vaccines.
The spy agency warned of North Korea's continued cyber attack this year on cryptocurrency exchanges and security-related organizations, Kim told reporters, declining to disclose any names.
Cyber experts insist the impoverished North has been desperate to secure foreign currencies due to tight international sanctions.
Last week, South Korean police launched a raid into Bithumb, the country's largest digital currency exchange, to find evidence related to hacking. In December last year, the Korea Communications Commission imposed a fine of 60 million won (56,750 US dollars) on the operator of Bithumb for negligence in the protection of information.
In the same month, Youbit, a domestic cryptocurrency exchange, shut down transactions, bowing to a series of attacks by hackers. It was not known who was behind hacking into the two cryptocurrency exchanges.
In December, Thomas Bossert, a U.S. presidential assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, accused Pyongyang of conducting a cyber attack using WannaCry ransomware that affected computers across the world. Pyongyang urged Washington to present "forensic evidence" and denounced U.S accusations as "a direct challenge to our system and political power".
reporter
Lim Chang-won
cwlim34@ajunews.com
![[SUMMARY] Daily News Selection by Aju Business Daily on December 20, 2022](https://image.ajunews.com/content/image/2022/12/21/20221221164744841810.jpg)