The US Treasury Department’s penalties added the North Korean National Song Kum Hyok to the “specially designated nationality” list, saying he was “a malicious cyber artist” tied to a North Korean hacking group.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control moved to block the song from the global financial system on Tuesday, focusing that he worked to put other North Korean officials in various companies as IT workers. IT workers will send funds back to North Korea and, in some cases, find ways of exploiting the companies they work for to generate additional income.
The crypto industry has become difficult through these types of schemes, with many major thefts occurring as a result of the efforts of North Korea hackers.
“The DPRK generates significant income by deploying IT workers who are fraudulent to get a job with companies around the world, including technology and virtual industries,” Tuesday’s release.
Late last month, crypto investigator and analyst Zachxbt Said “many projects … are exploited,” probably because of North Korean workers’ rent as developers.
Although the release of the Treasury Department of Tuesday mentioned previous hack of crypto projects, it did not name any specific or included any crypto wallets on its list of penalties. It noted that the department had previously permitted the Lazarus group, whose investigators were tied to various crypto hacks over the last few years, including the $ 625 million robbery from Axie Infinity and massive years this year $ 1.5 billion hack ng bybit.
“DPRK workers often take projects that involve virtual currency, and they use virtual currency exchanges and trading platforms to manage the funds they have received for contract work as well as launching and remitting these funds to the DPRK,” the US Department of Treasury said Tuesday.
‘Not a generation of income’ income ‘
Ari Redbord, the global leader of policy and government activities at the TRM Labs, said the embedded IT workers “served as on-ramp to both forbidden generations of income and final interference activity, especially in the crypto space.”
“One well -known aspect of today’s dedication is the explicit reference to North Korean IT workers who operate outside China and Russia,” he said, adding that it shows a “growing alignment” between the DPRK and some constituents.
“This action also fits into a broader pattern. Last month, Treasury took several steps that targeted North Korea’s use of IT workers to restore prohibited proceeds from Pyongyang who were often filled with crypto exchanges and unidentified platforms,” he said.
“The song represents the operation of the layer behind those schemes: not the hacker, but the enabler. And that makes him important to interfere.
Read more: How to -infiltrate North Korea the crypto industry
