US Levels Cybercrime Accusations, North Korea Rejects Them

According to AFP on Sunday (3/5/2026), the US accuses North Korea of intensifying its cyber warfare programme, which is responsible for stealing billions of dollars in virtual assets over the past few years. The US claims this hacking has become North Korea’s primary source of foreign currency amid heavy sanctions over its nuclear and weapons programmes. Meanwhile, North Korea denies the US accusations. In a statement broadcast by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), an unnamed spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the US government has “sought to spread a false understanding” about North Korea by “talking about a non-existent ‘cyber threat’”. He described it as an absurd slander. “This is nothing but absurd slander to tarnish our country’s image by spreading false information for political purposes,” he said. Previously in April, the US Department of Justice sentenced two American citizens for helping North Koreans obtain remote IT jobs with US companies and collecting millions of dollars in illegal income for its weapons programme. The Department of Justice said more than 100 US companies were targeted, including several Fortune 500 firms and defence contractors in the multi-year scheme. The ruse “placed North Korean IT workers on the payrolls of unsuspecting US companies and into US computer systems, thereby potentially endangering our national security,” said John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security. Google analysts and other cybersecurity experts said hackers linked to North Korea in April were suspected of carrying out an ambitious attack on an unremarkable but widely used software package. A United Nations panel estimated in 2024 that North Korean cyberattacks since 2017 have stolen more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency. The stolen funds help finance the development of weapons of mass destruction, the panel said. Pyongyang’s cyber warfare programme dates back to at least the mid-1990s, and the country has been dubbed the “world’s most prolific cyber thief” by a cybersecurity firm.