"North Korean Hackers Implanted Malware Through Phony Job Interviews"

[Anchor]

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has released a report detailing how an 8 trillion won hacking incident unfolded. It was revealed that North Korean hackers meticulously prepared their attack over a span of five months, even conducting fake job interviews.

Reporter Pyeon Gwanghyeon has the details.

[Reporter]

In a report released on the 3rd local time, Binance pinpointed the timing of North Korea's initial hacking attack as last June.

Investigators found that North Korean hackers tricked an engineer into downloading a malicious program disguised as a work-related application, thereby acquiring personal information of employees working on cryptocurrency wallet operations.

Three months later, they approached another engineer on a job search site by offering a new employment opportunity. During the interview process, posing as the chief executive officer, they planted malware once again under the pretext of an assignment.

Binance explained that the hacker organization managed to obtain authentication keys capable of manipulating company systems through the computers infected in this manner.

The full-scale cryptocurrency theft is believed to have taken place starting around 5:00 AM on October 30 Korean time.

Investigations showed that the hackers stole approximately 230 million Ripple tokens in just four minutes, followed by successive thefts of Solana, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.

The scale of the damage reached 6.34 billion dollars, which amounts to 8.4 trillion won in Korean currency.

Binance stated that out of this amount, 3.8 trillion won worth of assets were frozen or blocked, and that over 98% of the losses were covered using its own funds and insurance reserves.

Investigators from TRM Labs, a U.S. analytics firm that pointed to North Korea as the culprit six hours after the incident, stated that this hacking was the work of the elite North Korean hacking organization "TraderTraitor" and warned that South Korean exchanges could be the next targets.

(Video Editing: Kim Jong-tae)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.