South Korean Intelligence Service Informs Crypto Exchanges About Cyberthreats

The South Korean state intelligence agency is now providing crypto trading platforms with information about attempts to breach their cybersecurity. The help for the country’s digital asset exchanges comes amid growing threats, local media reported.

Intelligence Service Offers Cybersecurity Assistance to Major South Korean Crypto Exchanges

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) has started to alert the country’s major cryptocurrency exchanges about hacking attempts as threats of this nature are on the rise, the Yonhap news agency reported, quoting an announcement on Thursday.

Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit and Coinone, the four leading Korean coin trading platforms, have been granted real-time access to available information on online security threats. The data features the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses associated with hacking attacks, the intelligence agency detailed.

Cyberthreats are being identified in both the public and the private sector, NIS noted, pointing out that they are directly related to the national security of the Republic of Korea. The service emphasized the importance of tackling such threats and revealed:

In the future, we plan to provide and share more specialized information, including the latest malicious codes and hacking methods related to virtual assets.

Cryptocurrency exchanges, along with financial institutions, have been a prime target for hackers allegedly controlled by North Korea. According to a United Nations report produced by independent sanctions monitors and submitted to the Security Council in early February, cyberattacks on the coin trading platforms remain a major source of funds for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

“DPRK cyberactors stole more than $50 million between 2020 and mid-2021 from at least three cryptocurrency exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia,” the authors said. They also quoted the blockchain forensics firm Chainalysis which estimated that Pyongyang had appropriated close to $400 million in digital assets through attacks on several crypto companies last year.