Kim Jong-Un’s Sister Blasts the FBI for Accusing North Korea of the Largest Cyber-Theft Ever

The younger sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, Kim Yo Jong, is attacking the FBI’s claim that North Korean hackers stole $6.3 billion in crypto currency, by far the world’s biggest cyber-theft to date. With the venom she infuses into her blasts at Washington for demanding denuclearization and staging military exercises, she accuses the FBI of “a grave political provocation against the DPRK” — Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. North Korea’s second most powerful leader after her big brother, Ms. Kim charged that the FBI “misleads international public opinion as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds,” according to Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency. Ms. Kim, whose title is director of general affairs of the ruling Worker’s Party, of which her brother is general secretary, issued the fiery denial while South Korea was dealing with North Korean hacks into banks and stock brokers.“North Korean IP addresses linked to 4.4 million attempts to probe South’s financial system” was the headline in a leading Seoul newspaper, JoongAng Ilbo. “North Korean IP addresses linked to 4.4 million attempts to probe South’s financial system.”JoongAng said authorities had “warned financial institutions, including cryptocurrency exchanges, of suspicious scanning activity originating from North Korean IP addresses.” It was, said the paper, “the first official confirmation that North Korean IP addresses were used to access South Korean financial systems after a wave of hacking attempts” at leading banks.Seoul’s Yonhap News reported “a relentless wave of cyberattacks on South Korean banks, telecom operators, businesses and government agencies” that had “exposed growing risks to the country’s digital economy, highlighting the need for stronger cybersecurity.”South Korean authorities did not specifically blame North Korea for all the rising number of security lapses but said they “could extend beyond personal data theft to disrupt financial services, business operations and industrial supply chains.” The police, said Yonhap, were investigating the leak of passport details of the president, Lee Jae-myung, and his wife and other cabinet ministers who had accompanied him on a trip to Europe. All of them were issued new passports. Ms. Kim, however, directed her blast exclusively at Washington, saying the FBI was “trying to brand the DPRK as a ‘cyber criminal state” by “ claiming that it obtained information that a hacking organization ‘supported’ by the DPRK was involved in the incident.”The charges and countercharges by the FBI and Ms. Kim, who has a long record of venomous attacks on America for demanding the North give up its nuclear program, would appear to have sharply diminished the prospects for President Trump seeing her big brother again. Mr. Trump visits the Chinese city of Shenzhen this month for a gathering of leaders of the countries banded together in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group. Mr. Kim won’t be there for APEC, but there’s been speculation he and Mr. Trump might meet at that time. Analysts doubt,however, that Mr. Trump, while waiting for APEC, will take to berating the North over cyber crimes — or anything else..It’s “unlikely Trump will criticize North Korea since it undermines his narrative of Kim Jong-un being a close friend,” a former CIA analyst, Bruce Klingner, tells the Sun. Mr. Trump, he said, would not want to “further damage the potential for another leader meeting.”While Mr. Trump maty not want to condemn the North’s cybertheft of $6.3 billion from Binance, often described as the world’s largest crypto-trading platform, Mr. Klingner judges it “extremely unlikely that Kim will meet with Trump” during the APEC gathering.Mr. Klingner noted that Mr. Trump “had earlier declared his interest in meeting with Kim and claimed that the U.S. was in contact with North Korea.” More recently, he said, Mr. Trump “downplayed the potential for a meeting, even commenting, ‘I’m not sure that anybody’s asking for a meeting.’”

Kim Jong-Un’s Sister Blasts the FBI for Accusing North Korea of the Largest Cyber-Theft Ever

Kim Jong-Un’s Sister Blasts the FBI for Accusing North Korea of the Largest Cyber-Theft Ever

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