North Korea stole more crypto in 2022 than any other year: UN report
A confidential United Nations report has revealed North Korean hackers stole more crypto assets in 2022 than in any other year so far.
The UN report, seen by Reuters, was reportedly submitted to a 15-member North Korea sanctions committee last week.
It found North Korean-linked hackers were responsible for between $630 million and more than $1 billion in stolen crypto assets last year and targeted networks of foreign aerospace and defense companies.
The UN report also noted that cyber attacks were more sophisticated than in previous years, making tracing stolen funds more difficult than ever.
"[North Korea] used increasingly sophisticated cyber techniques both to gain access to digital networks involved in cyber finance, and to steal information of potential value, including to its weapons programmes,” according to independent sanctions monitors in its report to the UN Security Council Committee.
Last week, a Feb. 1 report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis came to a similar conclusion, linking North Korean hackers to at least $1.7 billion worth of stolen crypto in 2022, the highest in history.
The firm named the cybercriminal syndicates as the most "prolific cryptocurrency hackers over the last few years."
"For context, North Korea's total exports in 2020 totalled $142 million worth of goods, so it isn't a stretch to say that cryptocurrency hacking is a sizable chunk of the nation's economy," Chainalysis said.
According to Chainalysis, at least $1.1 billion of the stolen loot was taken from hacks of DeFi protocols, making North Korea one of the driving forces behind the DeFi hacking trend that intensified in 2022.
The firm also found that aside from DeFi protocols, North Korea-linked hackers tend to send large
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