North Koreans might be stealing money from your account

fuad lawal

April 7, 2017 8:55 PM

They are suspected of being responsible for stealing $81 million bucks a year ago.

North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un guiding the Korean People's Army Tank Crews' Competition 2017 in an undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency.

According to Kapersky, North Korean hackers are attacking banks in countries, including Nigeria.

This Russian online security firm didn't just talk about the mass attacks. He also added that perhaps, this could be the biggest bank heists in world history.

But this is not the first mention of it. Banks and security researchers previously identified cyber-heists in Financial institutions in Bangladesh, Ecuador, the Philippines and Vietnam.

This might be vague, but Kapersky has some pretty disturbing specifics.

The "Lazarus" Op.

That's what Kapersky is calling this operation. According to them, there have been attacks in Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Poland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Uruguay.

The investigation began one year ago, when the 'Lazarus' hacking group were allegedly responsible for an $81million theft from the Central Bank in Bangladesh.

While hacking is a threat disturbing enough by itself, the fact that North Korea might have their hands in this makes it the more disturbing.

CNN for example, believes North Korea is behind Lazarus.

But how do they know it's the North Koreans?

According to Kaspersky, hackers typically launch cyber attacks from computer servers far from home to hide their location.

The Lazarus hackers routed their signal through France, South Korea and Taiwan to set up that attack server. But Kapersky spotted a mistake: a connection that briefly went through North Korea.

“North Korea is a very important part of this equation,” said Vitaly Kamluk, who leads Kaspersky’s Asia-Pacific research team.

The North Korean government has of course, reportedly denied allegations of the hack. Kapersky is still giving North Korea the benefit of doubt. According to them, this “is not enough proof to provide definitive attribution given that the connection session could have been a false flag operation.”

When Nigeria Communications Week spoke to Isaac Okorafor, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Acting Director, Corporate Communications, this is what he said:

“We have not had anything like that in Nigeria. I am not aware of any such attacks on Nigerian banks.”

While we wait to find out who's responsible, is there anyone that can explain the missing one-nairas fom my bank account?

fuad lawal