The Biden administration has spent much of the last two years bracing key U.S. networks and infrastructure against crippling cyberattacks from Russia, Iran and China.

But it is following a different playbook as it ramps up its efforts to thwart digital threats from North Korea: Follow the crypto — and stop it.

Convinced North Korea primarily sees hacking as a way to funnel money back to the cash-strapped Kim Jong Un regime, the White House has focused on blocking the country’s ability to launder the cryptocurrency it steals through its cyberattacks.

In the last year, the administration has unveiled a flurry of sanctions against North Korean hacking groups, front companies and IT workers, and blacklisted multiple cryptocurrency services they use to launder stolen funds. Earlier this month, national security adviser Jake Sullivan announced a new partnership with Japan and South Korea aimed at cracking down on Pyongyang’s crypto bonanza — thereby choking off money to its nuclear and conventional weapons programs.

“In countering North Korean cyber operations, our first priority has been focusing on their crypto heists,” Anne Neuberger, the National Security Council’s top cybersecurity official, said in an interview.

The stepped-up effort to blunt North Korea’s cyber operations is fueled by growing alarm about where the fruits of those attacks are going, Neuberger said.

Hacking, she argued, has enabled North Korea to “either evade sanctions or evade the steps the international community has taken to target their weapons proliferation … their missile regime, and the growth in the number of launches we’ve seen.”

Poor regulation and shoddy security in the fast-growing cryptocurrency industry, which is dominated by start-ups, make it an easy target for Pyongyang’s hackers. Because of crypto’s inbuilt privacy features and the fact that it can be sent across borders at the click of a mousepad, it also offers a powerful tool to circumvent sanctions.

North Korea has conducted roughly 100 ballistic missile tests in the last year, and it staged its first intercontinental........

© Politico