Despite the pandemic, the North Korean ‘Lazarus’ group continues its malicious ways

• Throughout 2020, a group of hackers in relation to the North Korean regime have continued their malicious efforts in the world of crypto. 
• Under the name Lazarus, the group has targeted many crypto platforms over the course of the past year.

Throughout 2020, a group of hackers in relation to the North Korean regime have continued their malicious efforts in the world of crypto going on throughout the pandemic. 

Under the name Lazarus, the group has targeted many crypto platforms over the course of the past year. This comes from a new report from Chainalysis. One of the attacks involves the creation of a fraudulent trading bot that was provided to employees of the DragonEx platform.

More recently, a study performed by the antivirus designer, Kaspersky revealed that a new run somewhere has been created by Lazarus with this new threat of being known as VHD. Primarily, this targets the integral networks of companies in the economic world. As security awareness advocate, James McQuiggan has said the following:

“A VHD, or Virtual Hard Disk, is a similar concept to that of a USB drive. Instead of physically inserting the USB drive into the port on a computer, the VHD file can be downloaded onto a system to launch the ransomware attack process. For cybercriminals, they don't need physical access, just electronic access to download the file. This type of attack requires access to the systems. By exploiting external and vulnerable infrastructure or systems, they gain the access needed."

It’s groups like Lazarus that give the crypto space a bad image in the public eye. Typically, the group will breach a company's network at it in order to increase their data and from there they will proceed to ask the victims for a crypto-based ransom. 

Researchers at Kaspersky have speculated on the potential reasons behind the solo operations at the Lazarus:

“We can only speculate about the reason why they are now running solo ops: maybe they find it difficult to interact with the cybercrime underworld, or maybe they felt they could no longer afford to share their profits with third parties.”

It will be interesting to see how this situation plays out. For more news on this and other crypto updates, keep it with CryptoDaily!