North Korean state-controlled hackers are sharing underground banking and money laundering networks with fraudsters and drug traffickers across Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said on Monday. published a report accusing the government of , and Cambodia.
The report titled Casinos, money laundering, underground banking, and transnational organized crime in East and Southeast Asia: A hidden and accelerating threat, He said the rapid evolution of organized crime in the region was originally driven by “cross-border trafficking of synthetic drugs and other goods,” but that gangs have recently embraced high-tech and digital financial crimes.
Online casinos have proven particularly useful, especially those located in “boroughs and special economic zones or special economic zones throughout the region, which in some cases are safe havens or hotbeds for criminal networks.”
As profits through criminal networks soared, gangs developed an urgent need for “systems and infrastructure that would enable them to move and launder large amounts of state-sponsored fiat and virtual currency.”
UNODC investigators said a North Korean hacker group called Lazarus, said to be controlled by the paranoid communist state's main intelligence agency, came forward to provide access to the infrastructure.
Lazarus is operational Three major cybercrimes have made headlines for at least a decade. hack The project was launched by Sony Pictures in 2014 after Sony produced a comedy about the assassination of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.of $81 million heist From the Central Bank of Bangladesh in 2016.and wanna cry ransomware attack About 2017.
Lazarus has made it a priority to steal money to fund the North Korean regime, which is under severe sanctions. WannaCry infected hundreds of thousands of computer systems around the world, and many of the victims chose to pay the cryptocurrency ransom demanded by the hackers to unlock their trapped data. Attackers like the Bangladeshi robbers allowed hackers to loot millions of dollars in foreign currency. Lazarus took on another big job in September. plunder 41 million from an online casino platform called Stake.com.
Lazarus Group has reportedly developed technology for exploiting shady casinos. junket (Custom gambling trip for high rollers arranged by an independent contractor) in Southeast Asia to erase the paper trail of stolen millions of dollars.
In the Mekong Delta region, junket operators often face far less regulatory oversight than casinos, and since casinos are not subject to much scrutiny to begin with, Lazarus and his cronies mixed junket and casino funds. It is said that they have developed a plan to match. Hackers can inject stolen funds into junkets and launder them through casino chips, making it nearly impossible for international law enforcement to trace the funds.
UNODC has seen evidence that Lazarus was passing these techniques along with access to its favorite money laundering operators to drug cartels and online fraudsters.
“Through continuous analysis of incident information and blockchain data, UNODC has identified regional money laundering activities among Mekong-based cyber fraud operators, drug traffickers, and more sophisticated cyber threat actors, including the Lazarus Group. We observed several instances where rings and underground banking networks were innocently shared,” the report said.
International Crisis Group (ICG) in August explained The region of Myanmar and Laos is concentrated around the Mekong River as an “active crime continuum,” with entrenched political corruption making it difficult to investigate closely linked organized crime syndicates. Gangs in the region enjoy a general disregard from China, which could crack down more harshly if it wanted to, but “if it believes its national interests are under direct threat, “Only” corresponds to.
Cyber fraud in Southeast Asia has recently attracted the attention of human rights activists. Because a significant number of people who make fraudulent calls and send phishing emails Actually a slave, in some cases literally chained to a desk. Many of them are young university graduates who are lured by the trusted Asian community with false promises of employment and then kidnapped into sweatshops when they show up for a job interview.
“Even if these people are rescued or able to escape, too often they are detained for immigration crimes or charged with crimes of coercion,” the ICG noted.
The UNODC report mentioned one human trafficking ring that specialized in luring Taiwanese youth to Cambodia with the promise of professional employment, but ended up leaving them in “prison-like conditions upon arrival.” He allegedly imprisoned them in “conditions” and forced them to participate in cybercrime. The group hired professional travel agents to help the victims “procure passports, order airline tickets, arrange transportation,” and even gave them tips on how to clear Cambodian customs.
UNODC Southeast Asia and Pacific Regional Representative Jeremy Douglas Said Reuters reported on Monday that casinos and cryptocurrencies are causing a “massive increase” in organized crime in Southeast Asia.
“It's not surprising that sophisticated attackers would seek to exploit the same underground banking systems and service providers,” Douglas said.
Reuters contacted North Korea's mission to the UN and asked about the UNODC report. The unidentified person who responded said he “doesn't know much about this issue” and claimed that stories about the Lazarus Group are “all speculation and misinformation.”
North Korea's ties to hackers and organized crime may trouble UN investigators, but North Korea's new best friend in Russia remains untroubled.kremlin Said On Monday, Kim Jong Un will further develop ties with “our partners” in Pyongyang, building on an agreement reached during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Russia's Vostochny Space Launch Complex last year. .
“Dialogue at all levels will continue. We look forward to intense and fruitful negotiations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.One aspect of this close and fruitful relationship is North Korea, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials. supply Russia has missiles and artillery shells that could be used to invade Ukraine.
