US cyber security company Recorded Future has released a report on North Korea’s crypto mining activity. Apparently, starting in May 2019, the network traffic for mining currency (XMR) from IPs in North Korea has increased “at least ten times”. Currently, private cryptocurrency is the most popular mining asset in the region, surpassing BTC.
Recorded Future claims that the intensification of the Monero mining activity is part of the efforts of the Korean regime to circumvent economic sanctions.
Unlike other cryptocurrencies, XMR can be mined on non-specialized machines, such as conventional computers. This reduces operating costs and eliminates the need to import mining hardware from abroad
Cryptocurrencies are a valuable tool for North Korea
Monero transactions are also anonymous, which facilitates theft from monitoring attempts.
“We appreciate that cryptocurrencies are a valuable tool for North Korea as an independent source of income generation, but also as a means of moving and using illicit funds,”
is shown in the Recorded Future report.
North Korea’s mining activity is disguised as proxy IP addresses. This means that analysts could not determine the controlled XMR hash rate.
Earlier, a UN study suggested that a branch of the North Korean military should be responsible for cryptocurrency mining. The Record Future study could not say which entity was responsible based on the data collected.
Monero has been used by North Korea since August 2017, when traders involved in the WannaCry attack traded Bitcoin extorted to Monero. According to the report, the regime’s bitcoin mining activity has remained relatively static over the past two years.
Monero is the preferred cryptocurrency for many illicit and criminal organizations. A Japanese cyber security firm reported the mysterious outlaw hackers group this week. They have developed a number of sophisticated crypto mining tools that can be infiltrated into companies’ computer systems to mine currency.
A year ago, it was estimated that about 5% of the amount of Monero on the market was mined by malware.
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