The United States Intelligence agencies report that North Korea performed cybercrimes like crypto asset mining and theft from banks in order to bypass the sanctions, based on reports from a US international multimedia agency, Voice of America.

Deputy assistant director of the FBI’s cyber intelligence branch, Tonya Ugoretz, reported on Wednesday at a conference organized by Aspen Institute, an international nonprofit think tank, that as a result of sanctions, North Korea hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014, the Bangladesh Bank robbery in 2016 and the WannaCry ransomware incident in 2017.

The United States Department of Justice, in September 2018, charged Park Jin-hyok, a North Korean programmer, claiming that he was linked to a series of cyber attacks.

“As US sanctions are increasingly affecting North Korea more, the country carries out cyber attacks in order to make money either from crypto asset mining or theft from banks,” Ugoretz expressed.

The director of the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, Erin Joe, stated at the same conference that the United States government agencies had their attention on North Korea’s attempts of cryptocurrency cybercrimes, which are relatively new.

“The FBI, along with other agencies, puts much energy and resources trying to prevent malicious activity involving crypto assets,” He added

“It is a newer phenomenon and it comes with a number of problems that we need to study and understand so that we have the ability to stop cybercrimes related to crypto coins and regular currency.”

At the conference, “The Challenge of Deterrence in Cyberspace” was an important point of discussion as many talked about methods to handle cyber attacks and threats from Iran, Russia, China as well as individuals or independent groups.