€13 Million Cyberheist On BOV in 2019 Believed To Be Linked To North Korea
On February 13th, 2019, a hacker group named Empire Monkey by investigators allegedly stole €13 Million from the vaults of BOV, leading to an international investigation that may connect them to North Korea.
The group broke into the Autorité des Marchés Financiers in France and posed as the authority to contact entities in Malta and France. They sent authentic-looking emails with letterheads and a fake document that granted them access to the banks’ systems. They then transferred huge sums of money to banks in the UK, US, Czech Republic, and Hong Kong.
Two years later, Nigerian influencer Ramon Abbas, aka Hush Puppi, was charged with money laundering, including the BOV heist. Abbas and accomplice Ghaleb Alaumary were sentenced to 11 years in the US for the crime.
The Lazarus Heist, a BBC true crime podcast, suggests that Alaumary and Abbas may have conspired with the Lazarus Group, a cybercrime collective with ties to the North Korean government.
According to The Times, the podcast reports on the group’s cybercrime efforts, which allegedly fund North Korea’s nuclear program.
The BBC reporters believe that the same Lazarus Group responsible for the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, the 2016 cyberheist on Bangladesh Bank, and the 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack are responsible for the BOV hack. The hackers targeted BOV’s Swift messaging system, enabling them to send the money to bank accounts they control.
Alaumary and Abbas were probably only brought in to provide more drop accounts. They probably all knew each other through the dark web without physical encounters.
Abbas had millions of followers on Instagram where he flaunted his ostentatious lifestyle. Millionaire hideaways, private jets and designer shopping sprees all came to an end after the Dubai Palazzo Versace Hotel raid.
$40 million in cash, as well as 13 luxury cars, 21 computers, 47 smartphones, 15 memory sticks, five hard disks containing 119,580 fraud files and the addresses of 1.9 million victims, were confiscated in the raid.
The US authorities also indicted three members of a North Korean intelligence agency, Jin Hyok, Jon Chang Hyok and Kim Il, for having participated in Lazarus hacking campaigns.
€12 million stolen from the heist have been traced leaving one million that have been irretrievably lost.
Do you think it is plausible the North Koreans were behind this heist?
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