South Korean authorities on Bithumb hack: North Korea likely responsible

South Korea’s Supreme Prosecutors’ Office sources told today that, according to the analysis of IP addresses and other traces left by hackers, the North Korean regime is very likely to be behind the attack on Bithumb, one of the major South Korean cryptocurrency exchanges. Local media outlets in South Korea report this citing unnamed insiders, but the representative of Supreme Prosecutors’ Office has declined to comment on any investigation matters.

This year, the South Korean cryptocurrency market has seen a number of attacks from unknown sources. Sometimes those attacks were just aimed at harming structural integrity of cryptocurrency market in South Korea, and sometimes, the primary goal of government-backed hackers was stealing funds.

In other news about hackers and cryptocurrency, North Korea might be responsible for the disastrous WannaCry attack as well. When it happened, computers around the world became blocked with ransomware – special viruses demanded ransom in cryptocurrency to unblock the user data. The head of Microsoft suspects the North Korean regime behind this and calls for new, digital Geneva convention, or rules of cyberwarfare.