The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS), the country’s spy agency, said that North Korean hackers were behind attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges this year in which about 7.6 billion won (US$6.98 million) worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
The cyberattacks attributed to North Korean hackers also included in June leaking personal information from 36,000 accounts from the world’s busiest cryptocurrency exchange, Bitthumb, the Chosun Ilbo reported, citing the agency.
Attacks also included the theft of cryptocurrencies from accounts at exchanges Yapizon, now called Youbit, and Coinis in April and September, it said.
The 7.6 billion won of stolen cryptocurrencies are now worth about 90 billion won, the Chosun Ilbo said.
It cited the agency as saying that North Korean hackers had also demanded 6 billion won from Bitthumb in return for deleting the leaked personal information.
Another cyberattack in October on about 10 cryptocurrency exchanges by North Korean hackers, using e-mails containing malware, was thwarted by the Korea Internet Security Agency (KISA), the newspaper reported.
The NIS found that the malware used to hack the exchanges was made using the same method as malware used to hack Sony Pictures and Bangladesh Bank, Bangladesh’s central bank, in 2014 and last year respectively, the newspaper said, adding that it said e-mails used in the attacks used North Korean Internet addresses.
The NIS declined to comment.
Representatives for KISA, Bitthumb, Youbit and Coinis could not be reached for comment.
In related news, TD Ameritrade Holding Corp is to let its brokerage clients trade bitcoin futures starting tomorrow, a week after they debuted.
Customers are to gain access to contracts offered by Cboe Global Markets Inc; to trade, they must have a minimum account balance of US$25,000 and post margin — or collateral — that is 50 percent higher than Cboe requires, according to a statement e-mailed on Friday.
CME Group Inc is introducing its own bitcoin futures today, but TD Ameritrade customers will not immediately be able to trade those, the company said.
“Right now, we are taking the same approach we did with the Cboe product, to wait and see how it goes,” said JB Mackenzie, managing director for futures trading at TD Ameritrade. “We want to watch that market open and become an orderly marketplace, and see who the participants are in that marketplace,” Mackenzie said. “This is the same process we use with any new product. We want to see how the market reacts.”
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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