North Korea arrests its own alleged bank-hacking crypto crew 💸

North Korean authorities have arrested a group of former state cyber operators and IT specialists accused of hacking two state banks and laundering stolen funds through cryptocurrency, according to a Daily NK report published Thursday. The Seoul-based outlet, citing an anonymous source in Pyongyang, said the group allegedly breached the internal networks of North Korea's central bank and the Foreign Trade Bank, converting stolen state funds into cryptocurrency before laundering them through brokers based in China. Cointelegraph was not able to independently verify the report.

If confirmed, the arrests would represent a rare case of North Korean cyber operators being accused of targeting their own government's financial institutions. Pyongyang has long been linked by international investigators to state-backed hacking groups that target crypto companies to generate revenue and circumvent sanctions.

Daily NK is a Seoul-based outlet that covers North Korea through a network of inside sources. Reporting from inside the country is difficult to verify independently because of restrictions on access and information. The scope of the alleged scheme, including the sums involved and the identities of those detained, was not disclosed in the report.

The arrests come amid broader scrutiny of North Korean IT workers operating abroad. Consensys previously disclosed that it had unknowingly outsourced developer work to North Korean contractors, underscoring how the country's technical workforce has been used to generate foreign income.

The Daily NK report did not specify whether any of the alleged stolen funds have been recovered, whether the China-based brokers have been identified, or which cryptocurrency assets were used in the laundering process.