North Korean hackers sharing money-laundering networks in Southeast Asia: UN

North Korean hackers are sharing money-laundering and underground banking networks with fraudsters and drug traffickers in Southeast Asia, in accordance with a United Nations report, with casinos and cryptocurrency exchanges rising as key venues for organised crime.

The UN Workplace of Medicine and Crime (UNODC) mentioned with out elaborating it had noticed “a number of cases” of such sharing within the Mekong space – which incorporates Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia – by hackers together with North Korea’s Lazarus Group.

The UNODC mentioned it had recognized the exercise by way of evaluation of case data and blockchain knowledge.

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Contacted by telephone concerning the UNODC report printed on Monday, an individual at North Korea’s mission to the UN in Geneva mentioned, with out giving his title, that he was “not accustomed to the difficulty” and that earlier reporting on Lazarus was “all hypothesis and misinformation”.

Lazarus, which the USA has mentioned is managed by North Korea’s major intelligence bureau, has been accused of involvement in a string of high-profile cyberheists and ransomware assaults. Funds stolen by North Korean hackers are a key supply of funding for Pyongyang and its weapons programmes.

The UNODC report mentioned Southeast Asia’s casinos and junkets, which facilitate playing by high-wealth gamers, in addition to unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges, had grow to be “foundational items” of the banking structure utilized by organised crime within the area.

Casinos have confirmed “succesful and environment friendly in shifting and laundering huge volumes” of crypto and conventional money undetected, it mentioned, “creating channels for successfully integrating billions in legal proceeds into the formal monetary system”.

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The junket sector has been infiltrated by organised crime for “industrial-scale cash laundering and underground banking operations”, with hyperlinks to drug trafficking and cyberfraud, the report mentioned.

It cited licensed casinos and junket operators within the Philippines which helped launder round US$81 million stolen in a cyber-attack on Bangladesh’s Central Financial institution in 2016, which was attributed to the Lazarus Group.

The proliferation of casinos and crypto have “supercharged” organised crime teams in Southeast Asia, UNODC Regional Consultant for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Jeremy Douglas informed Reuters.

“It’s no shock refined menace actors would look to leverage the identical underground banking techniques and repair suppliers,” he mentioned.