DOJ Seizes $500K in Ransom Payments, Cryptocurrency From State-Sponsored North Korean Hackers

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken $500K in ransom payments and cryptocurrency from a state-sponsored North Korean cluster. “We area unit returning the taken funds to the victims,” Deputy lawyer General Lisa O. princedom same, adding that the taken funds embody ransoms paid by health care suppliers in Kansas and Colorado.

DOJ Seizes Crypto From North Korean State-Backed cluster

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) declared Tues that it’s taken and confiscate some $500K from North Korean ransomware actors and their conspirators. The department superimposed that it’s filed a criticism “in the District of Kansas to forfeit cryptocurrency paid as ransom to North Korean hackers or otherwise wont to launder such ransom payments.”

The Department of Justice stated:

In could 2022, the FBI filed a sealed seizure warrant for the funds value some [*fr1] 1,000,000 bucks. The taken funds embody ransoms paid by health care suppliers in Kansas and Colorado.

Deputy lawyer General Lisa O. princedom reiterated Tues at the International Conference on Cyber Security 2022, “We taken some [*fr1] 1,000,000 bucks in ransom payments and cryptocurrency wont to launder those payments.” She added: “Thanks to fast reportage and cooperation from a victim, the FBI and DoJ prosecutors have discontinuous the activities of a North Korean state-sponsored cluster deploying ransomware called ‘Maui.’”

Last year, the North Korean cluster encrypted a Kansas medical center’s servers wont to “store important information and operate key instrumentation,” princedom elaborate. The attackers demanded ransom, that the hospital paid.

The FBI and DoJ prosecutors copied the ransom payment through the blockchain. “The FBI known China-based cash launderers — the sort United Nations agency frequently assist North Koreans in ‘cashing out’ ransom payments into edict currency,” the deputy lawyer general elaborate. “Additional blockchain analysis discovered that these same accounts contained alternative ransom payments. The FBI copied those to a different medical supplier in Colorado and potential overseas victims.”

Monaco added:

Today, we’ve got created public the seizure of these ransom payments, and that we area unit returning the taken funds to the victims.

In October last year, princedom declared the creation of a National Cryptocurrency social control Team (NCET). The aim of the initiative is “to tackle complicated investigations and prosecutions of criminal misuses of cryptocurrency, significantly crimes committed by virtual currency exchanges, commixture and tumbling services, and concealing infrastructure actors,” the Department of Justice delineated . “The team also will assist in tracing and recovery of assets lost to fraud and extortion, as well as cryptocurrency payments to ransomware teams.”

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