UN Investigates North Korea on Cyberattacks Funding WMD

The U.N. experts are currently investigating 35 cases in 17 countries where North Koreas were using cyberattacks to raise money for the military objective.   

They are calling for sanctions against ships that are providing gasoline and diesel to the country as a precaution for the money raised to be used for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.  

Reported last week, experts said North Korea “used cyberspace to launch increasingly sophisticated attacks to steal funds from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges to generate income.”   

The experts also mentioned that the U.N. is investigating “at least 35 reported instances of DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) actors attacking financial institutions, cryptocurrency exchanges, and mining activity to earn foreign currency.”  

The U.N. experts noted that the attacks targeting cryptocurrency exchanges allowed it “to generate income in ways that are harder to trace and subject to less government oversight and regulation than the traditional banking sector.”  

A U.S. State Department spokeswoman said: “We call upon all responsible states to take action to counter North Korea’s ability to conduct malicious cyber activity, which generates revenue that supports its unlawful weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs.”  

The reported attacks being investigated were attempted violations of U.N. Sanctions. South Korea took the hardest hit, with 10 North Korean cyberattacks. Other countries that were attacked were India, Bangladesh, Chile, Costa Rica, Gambia, Guatemala, Kuwait, Liberia, Malaysia, Malta, Nigeria, Poland, Slovenia, South Africa, Tunisia, and Vietnam.   

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