In February, the blockchain company Chainalysis published a report stating that hackers from North Korea stole digital currencies worth approximately $1.7 billion in 2022. Just over 80% of this amount was withdrawn by cybercriminals from the DeFi decentralized finance market.
As the newspaper Nikkei specifies, Japanese investors were among the most affected by the actions of North Korean hackers.
Since 2017, they have lost more than $720 million in digital currencies, about 30% of all funds stolen by cybercriminals from the DPRK.
$540 million in virtual currencies have been stolen from Vietnamese users of blockchain services and bitcoin exchanges. In third place are investors from the United States. Their losses from the actions of North Korean hackers exceeded $497 million.
Most of the victims are Japanese cryptocompanies that accumulated their own funds and clients’ digital assets.
Journalists believe that the DPRK replenishes its treasury with stolen virtual currencies. These funds are used to buy goods in foreign markets to circumvent the sanctions regime in place for Pyongyang.