A federal indictment has been put out charging three North Korean computer programmers with participating in a wide-ranging criminal conspiracy to conduct a series of destructive cyberattacks, to steal and extort more than $1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies, one of which was NiceHash, in 2017, where $75 million was stolen.

The hacking indictment filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles says that Jon Chang Hyok, 31; Kim Il, 27; and Park Jin Hyok, 36, were members of units of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), a military intelligence agency of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), which engaged in criminal hacking. These North Korean military hacking units are known by multiple names in the cybersecurity community, including Lazarus Group and Advanced Persistent Threat 38 (APT38). Park was previously charged in a criminal complaint unsealed in September 2018.

We are pleased the US authorities continue to take cyber attacks seriously and continued their investigations to get to the bottom of this case. Some people pointed fingers at NiceHash after this unfortunate and damaging hack happened, with a few even going as far as to spread fake news based upon the story of our former founder, Matjaž Škorjanc, who was wrongly convicted based upon inadmissable evidence. His insight and experience was instrumental in turning NiceHash into one of the safest exchanges in the world after the hack. The harmful accusations of an inside job were groundless, and have now been proven to be false by this investigation.

This North Korean hacker group who were responsible for the 2017 hack of NiceHash also stole $24.9 million from an Indonesian cryptocurrency company in September 2018, and $11.8 million from a financial services company in New York in August 2020 in which the hackers used the malicious CryptoNeuro Trader application as a backdoor, as well as a staggering wave of crime, money-laundering and hacks that went on for many years.

NiceHash managed to repay the stolen bitcoins over several years out of our own profits, as it was the right thing to do, as we value our customers and the support they have given us over the years. We are very grateful to those who placed their faith in us, and enabled us to grow stronger to where we are today.

You can read the full US indictment on the Justice.gov site, and more information here.