Japan’s national police have singled out the North Korean hacker group Lazarus as the organization behind several years of cryptocurrency-related cyberattacks..
In the public advisory statement sent on October 14, Japan’s National Police Agency (NPA) and Financial Services Agency (FSA) sent a warning to the country’s crypto-asset companies, asking them to remain vigilant against phishing attacks by the group of hackers aimed at stealing crypto-assets.
The warning statement is known as “public attribution” andaccording to local reports, it is the fifth time in history that the government has issued such a warning.
The statement warns that hacker group uses social engineering to orchestrate phishing attacks, posing as executives of a targeted company to try to trick employees into clicking malicious links or attachments:
“This cyberattack group sends phishing emails to employees posing as executives of the target company […] through social networks with false accounts, simulating commercial transactions […] The cyber attack group [entonces] uses the malware as a foothold to gain access to the victim’s network.”
According to the statement, phishing has been a common mode of attack used by North Korean hackers, with the NPA and FSA urging targeted companies to keep their “private keys in an offline environment” and “not open email attachments or careless hyperlinks”.
The statement added that individuals and businesses should not “download files from sources other than those whose authenticity can be verified, especially in the case of applications related to cryptocurrency assets”.
The APN also suggested that digital asset holders “install security software”, strengthen identity authentication mechanisms by “implementing multi-factor authentication” and do not use the same password for multiple devices or services.
APN confirmed that several of these attacks have been successfully carried out against Japan-based digital asset companies.but did not reveal any specific details.
The Lazarus Group is allegedly affiliated with the North Korean Reconnaissance General Officea government-run foreign intelligence group.
Katsuyuki Okamoto, of the multinational IT company Trend Micro, told the Yomiuri Shimbun that “Lazarus initially targeted banks in various countries, but has lately gone after crypto assets that are more loosely managed”.
They have been accused of being the hackers behind the $650 million Ronin Bridge exploit in March and were identified as suspects in the $100 million Harmony blockchain layer 1 attack..
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