US charges North Korean computer programmers in global hacks

The Justice Department has charged three North Korean computer programmers in a broad range of global and destructive hacks, including targeting banks and a movie studio, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.

The newly unsealed indictment builds off an earlier criminal case brought in 2018 and adds two additional North Korean defendants. Prosecutors say all three programmers are members of a military intelligence agency of the North Korean government.

It blames that intelligence agency, known as the Reconnaissance General Bureau, in a global conspiracy that extorted more than $1.3 billion of money and cryptocurrency from banks and companies; unleashed a sweeping ransomware campaign; and hacks that targeted Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014 over a Hollywood movie the North Korean government didn't like.

“As laid out in today's indictment, North Korea's operatives, using keyboards rather than guns, stealing digital wallets of cryptocurrency instead of sacks of cash, are the world's leading bank robbers,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers, the Justice Department's top national security official, told reporters.