{
	"id": "7b4b1939-0748-4312-836e-b5c5f83813db",
	"created_at": "2026-04-06T00:07:32.627548Z",
	"updated_at": "2026-04-10T03:38:19.459389Z",
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	"sha1_hash": "44685ea8f03cc35db256d415cd5027c234df9ad4",
	"title": "Lazarus APT Spinoff Linked to Banking Hacks",
	"llm_title": "",
	"authors": "",
	"file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
	"file_modification_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
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	"plain_text": "Lazarus APT Spinoff Linked to Banking Hacks\r\nBy Michael Mimoso\r\nPublished: 2017-04-03 · Archived: 2026-04-05 13:44:25 UTC\r\nThe Lazarus Group has splintered off a group whose mission is to attack banks and steal money in order to fund\r\nits operations.\r\nSINT MAARTEN—The Lazarus Group, a nation-state level of attacker tied to the 2014 attacks on Sony Pictures\r\nEntertainment, has splintered off a portion of its operation to concentrate on stealing money to fund itself.\r\nThe group, widely believed to be North Korean, has been linked to a February 2016 attack against the Bangladesh\r\nCentral bank that resulted in more than $850 million in fraudulent SWIFT network transactions, $80 million of\r\nwhich still has not been recovered.\r\nAt the Security Analyst Summit, researchers from Kaspersky Lab and BAE Systems explained how the splinter\r\ngroup, known as Bluenoroff, has almost exclusively hit financial institutions, casinos, financial trade software\r\ndevelopment companies and cryptocurrency businesses. The group has also been connected to an attack earlier\r\nthis year against banks in Poland, based on code strings and wiper malware discovered and known to be part of\r\nLazarus’ arsenal.\r\nhttps://threatpost.com/lazarus-apt-spinoff-linked-to-banking-hacks/124746/\r\nPage 1 of 3\n\nVitaly Kamluk of Kaspersky Lab and Adrian Nish and Sergey Shevchenko of BAE Systems today published an\r\nupdate on Lazarus and Bluenoroff, pinning to them their unique interest in SWIFT software. SWIFT is a global\r\nnetwork supporting financial transactions and messaging between institutions. The attackers, researchers said,\r\naren’t looking for smash-and-grab bank robberies. They learn the inner workings of SWIFT software and develop\r\nand implement patches that allow the attackers to steal significant amounts of money without leaving a trace\r\nbehind on the hacked systems.\r\nDries Watteyne, SWIFT head of customer security intelligence, also appeared at SAS and said the attackers had\r\nintimate knowledge of how the SWIFT network processes transactions and messages between financial\r\ninstitutions.\r\n“They had sophisticated knowledge on a business level,” Watteyne said. “They were able to make sure all\r\nmessages sent from the bank and statements from the U.S. bank were hidden.”\r\nWatteyne explained that with an international transaction of U.S. dollars, emitters send payment instructions to a\r\nU.S. bank, which remits an acknowledgement before sending funds to an offshore bank.\r\nThe attackers used stolen credentials to inject custom malware at the bank that was able to delete all payment\r\ninstructions from the targeted database, modify SWIFT messages, including start- and end-of-day statements, and\r\nalso bypass integrity verification checks built into the system.\r\nThe Lazarus Group is alleged to have leaked mountains of sensitive data from Sony Pictures Entertainment in\r\n2014, including emails, movie scripts and other confidential information. Following the Sony hack in January\r\n2015, the U.S. levied sanctions against North Korean defense agencies, two other government agencies and 10\r\nindividuals. The Executive Order explaining the sanctions came two weeks after North Korea suffered a DDoS\r\nattack that disconnected much of the country from the Internet.\r\nLazarus Group’s interest in profit is relatively new, the researchers said. They’ve adopted a number of tactics\r\npreferred by cybercriminals, including watering hole attacks to compromise financial targets. In these attacks, a\r\nwebsite of common interest to the target is attacked and spiked with malicious code designed to exploit a\r\nvulnerable browser or piece of third-party software.\r\nBAE’s Nish said they used iframes to redirect browsers to sites hosting scripts that check for vulnerabilities,\r\ndeliver exploits and payloads. Most of the Bluenoroff attacks were initially focused on Southeast Asia and\r\ndeveloping countries. Starting with the Poland attacks, their bravado grew and was much more global.\r\nThe link between Bluenoroff, North Korea and Lazarus gained steam, Kamluk said, from an analysis of a\r\ncommand and control server in Europe used in attacks. The researchers determined how the attackers connected to\r\nthe server and tested their backdoors using multiple IPs from around the world. One short connection, however,\r\nwas made from an IP range in North Korea.\r\nhttps://threatpost.com/lazarus-apt-spinoff-linked-to-banking-hacks/124746/\r\nPage 2 of 3\n\nKamluk said the attackers’ installation of cryptocurrency mining software crashed the server and likely kept the\r\nattackers from properly wiping their traces. While none of the researchers would commit fully to attributing North\r\nKorea to these attacks, the evidence does indicate some involvement.\r\n“If it is North Korea,” Kamluk said, “we know very little about its current motivation and use of offensive\r\ncapabilities.”\r\nSource: https://threatpost.com/lazarus-apt-spinoff-linked-to-banking-hacks/124746/\r\nhttps://threatpost.com/lazarus-apt-spinoff-linked-to-banking-hacks/124746/\r\nPage 3 of 3",
	"extraction_quality": 1,
	"language": "EN",
	"sources": [
		"MISPGALAXY",
		"Malpedia",
		"ETDA"
	],
	"references": [
		"https://threatpost.com/lazarus-apt-spinoff-linked-to-banking-hacks/124746/"
	],
	"report_names": [
		"124746"
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