Japanese police "North Korean hacker group stole 450 billion won of Japanese company's Bitcoin in May"

A large-scale Bitcoin fraud case worth 450 billion won in Japan in May was found to have been committed by a North Korean hacker group.

Japan's National Police Agency and the National Police Agency announced that Trader Trater, a hacker group related to North Korea, stole 48.2 billion yen (about 450 billion won) of virtual currency from its virtual currency exchange "DMM Bitcoin" in May.

Japanese police worked with the U.S. Department of Defense and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to find that a group of North Korean hackers committed the crime, but did not identify the suspect.

Police tracked the flow of Bitcoin stolen from DMM Bitcoin and found that it had entered an account managed by a "trader trader."

North Korean hackers were found to have stolen virtual currency by infecting malware (malicious software) on their computers after approaching employees of DMM bitcoin-related companies under the guise of a headhunter.

The DMM Bitcoin incident in May was the largest virtual currency leak in Japan in about three years since 2021, the second largest in amount since CoinCheck's cryptocurrency hack in 2018.

In an annual report released in March, the UN Security Council's North Korea Sanctions Committee said, "The amount of cyberattacks from 2017 to 2023 by North Korea against virtual asset-related companies is estimated to be about $3 billion (about 4 trillion won)."

In a report released on the 19th of this month, blockchain data analysis company Chainalysis said hackers linked to North Korea stole a total of $1.34 billion (about 1.95 trillion won) from various platforms through 47 virtual currency thefts this year.