«Cryptocurrency sanctions» come into effect in Japan

The Japanese parliament has approved amendments to existing financial regulations to prevent money laundering using cryptocurrencies. The amendments oblige cryptocurrency exchanges to exchange information about users: to provide personal data and channels of communication with customers at the first request of law enforcement. They also allow Japanese law enforcement to freeze the assets of local legal entities or individuals recognized by the UN as contributing to the development or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Thus, on Tuesday, October 18, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno announced that the government had frozen the assets of five companies involved in the development of nuclear weapons and missiles for North Korea.

Yesterday it became known that the Lazarus hacker group, supported by the North Korean authoritarian regime, sends phishing emails to Japanese employees of cryptocurrency exchanges. The spam messages contained malware, so some companies were hacked and lost their crypto assets.

It should be added that the Lazarus Group hacker group has been repeatedly accused of stealing cryptocurrency for the North Korean authorities. Experts claim that these funds are used to develop nuclear weapons. The UN Security Council’s North Korea Sanctions Committee also accused hackers of attacking the Harmony and Ronin Bridge networks, which proved successful and brought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency to the attackers.

As we reported earlier, the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group has started hunting for MacOS users looking for work in the crypto sector. The hackers created fake job ads on the Singaporean cryptocurrency exchange Crypto. com. They sent fake job postings with fraudulent links to people who had posted their own resumes to find work.