The U.S. Treasury Department has imposed sanctions against hackers from North Korea. The official document refers to three large hacker groups — Lazarus, Bluenoroff and Andariel — who are accused of stealing at least $2 billion from cryptocurrency exchanges and banks.
The accounts of Lazarus, Bluenoroff and Andariel will be blocked, and American companies will not be allowed to cooperate with them. United States Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Sigal Mandelker claims treasury is taking action against North Korean hacking groups that have been perpetrating cyber attacks "to support illicit weapon and missile programs."
"We will continue to enforce existing U.S. and UN sanctions against North Korea and work with the international community to improve cybersecurity of financial networks," Mandelker added.
It also has been reported that the Lazarus group was involved in the destructive WannaCry 2.0 ransomware attack which the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom publicly attributed to North Korea in December 2017.
Earlier this year, iHodl reported that the United Nations experts published a report in which they describe how North Korea managed to steal money by hacking several financial institutions and crypto trading platforms in order to fund its nuclear program.
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