US, Korea, and Japan have begun jointly developing measures to combat crypto hackers from the DPRK

What’s new? The governments of the United States, South Korea, and Japan have begun to develop joint measures to combat hackers from the DPRK, who attack cryptocurrency projects to finance programs to create weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles. The parties estimate the damage from hacks on crypto projects by North Korean hackers at several billion dollars. The largest incident in the history of the industry was the hack of the Ronin sidechain of the Axie Infinity game on March 23 last year, carried out by the Lazarus group, the damage exceeded $625 million.

White House’s press release

What else is known? A meeting between US National Security Advisors Jake Sullivan, Korea’s Cho Tae-Yong, and Japan’s Takeo Akiba was held in Seoul. Following its outcome, the White House issued a press release noting “progress on a wide range of trilateral initiatives, including the Commitment to Consult on regional crises, the sharing of ballistic missile defense data, and our collective efforts to respond to the DPRK’s use of cryptocurrency to generate revenue for its illicit WMD programs.”

Damages from crypto project hacks totaled $349 million in November

The method of attack on most of the platforms is still unidentified

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Earlier, the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions against several cryptocurrency mixers that North Korean hackers used to launder and transfer stolen funds. In May and August last year, the Blender and Tornado Cash services were blocked, and in November this year, officials included the Sinbad platform in the sanctions list.

In addition, the creators of Tornado Cash, Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, have been charged in the United States with laundering $1 billion, and one of the developers, Alexey Pertsev, is awaiting trial in the Netherlands.

US Treasury Department imposes sanctions on Sinbad mixer for ties to DPRK hackers

Funds from the largest hacks of crypto projects have passed through the service

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The US authorities are also actively investigating the use of cryptocurrencies by terrorists. The Senate called for prosecuting Binance and Tether for facilitating transfers in favor of illegal groups. Later, the Department of the Treasury allowed the possibility that it would impose sanctions against foreign issuers of stablecoins. Following this, Tether voluntarily froze all wallets included in the sanctions list.