Famous Lazarus Hackers Steal Cryptocurrency Via Telegram

Lazarus, a famous hacking group originating from North Korea, might be trying to steal Bitcoin and other digital currencies through Telegram. Previously, the hackers from this illustrious group have managed to crackdown a good number of cryptocurrency exchanges and run away with a huge amount of money, and other victim exchanges have declared their bankruptcy.

When we talk of North Korea, most people know that it’s one of those few countries that are so hard to predict or understand. In the recent past, the country was doing everything possible to develop most powerful nuclear weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and also support innovative projects which can threaten or concern other nations. However, all these were watered down due to the U.S. sanctions and regular international meetings between the leaders of two states.

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The government brought in experts including Virgil Griffith (a U.S. national from Singapore) in the field of blockchain and digital assets to educate its citizens about the benefits involved with the use of this nascent technology. This triggered North Koreans to turn their eyes on developing distributed ledger technology and cryptocurrency initiatives. Unfortunately, due to the political turmoil and clashes between the two countries, when Virgil landed in the U.S. in November last year, he was immediately confined by the security agents.

In their massive cryptocurrency-stealing campaign, it appears that the Lazarus hackers group are so much interested in attacking any digital asset and Bitcoin-related businesses. In fact, according to Kaspersky's press release, the group has increased its targets to snip as much cryptocurrencies as possible, and that the attackers are employing various methodologies and tactics in their cutting-edge campaign.

For instance, it is alleged that the group is using a malware which runs in memory instead of executing on hard drives (HDDs), and this enables it to do its operations without being easily noticed. Also, security experts think that hackers are trying to use Telegram messaging app (because of its massive cryptocurrency ecosystem) to carry its illegal activities. Remember, Telegram is also trying to make its own cryptocurrency called Gram more effective, marketable and highly used within the community. 

As coinidol.com, world blockchain news outlet, has previously reported, United Nations (UN) released a report, indicating that North Korea collected more than $2 bln for its WMD undertakings through massive cyberattacks which used to enter and have access into the user's bank accounts as well as numerous cryptoasset exchanges.

As a matter of fact, it is predicted that these cryptoasset exchanges which have suffered heavy attacks including Mt. Gox from Japan, DragonEx and CoinBene from Singapore, Cryptopia from New Zealand, Binance located in Malta, etc. were hacked by the Lazarus Group. These unexpected attacks have caused cryptoasset exchanges and cryptocurrency holders to register huge losses.