“The golden time for recovering North Korean hacked coins is only a few days… Cooperation between Korea, the US and Japan is an urgent priority.”

It was suggested that cooperation between South Korea, the United States, and Japan is urgent to recover the coins that North Korea stole from Binance, the world's largest virtual currency exchange.

In a written interview with Yonhap News on the 5th (local time), Ari Redboard, head of global policy at TRM Labs, a global blockchain analysis company, emphasized that the deadline for freezing and recovering stolen funds is running out, and that money laundering channels must be blocked through triangular cooperation between the three countries.

Redboard General Manager evaluated that the Korean financial authorities took quick initial action immediately after the incident, such as convening major exchanges to check the security status and requesting caution with withdrawals.

On the other hand, he pointed out that diplomatic responses tend to be cautious, and emphasized the need for a quick response, saying, "Speed ​​is the most important thing in these cases," and "the time to freeze and recover stolen funds is only hours or days, not months."

He reaffirmed, “Based on strong on-chain and off-chain evidence (inside and outside the blockchain ledger), it is clear that this incident was the work of North Korea.”

Regarding cyber sanctions against North Korea related to this incident, Redboard General Manager explained that sanctions should not simply be aimed at individual hackers, but are only effective if they target money laundering infrastructure.

He advised, “Sanctions cannot prevent hacking itself, but they can increase the cost of cashing out stolen virtual assets,” and added, “The most effective measure is to designate over-the-counter (OTC) brokers and brokers who exchange stolen coins for real currency as targets of sanctions.”

He added that when designating sanctions targets, the list should be unified with the United States and Japan, and wallet addresses and identifiers should be shared so that exchanges can immediately check them.

In particular, it was pointed out that if such a request for sanctions is not made in real time, it will only be a symbolic measure.

Regarding Korea's virtual asset regulatory environment, he said that it has strengths, such as mandating that most of users' assets be stored in 'cold wallets' that are not connected to the Internet, but that speed, cooperation system, and lack of standardized freezing procedures between exchanges are weaknesses that need to be addressed.

At the same time, he added that we need to move away from the post-request method and switch to a system such as real-time cooperation and blocking.

In addition to sanctions against North Korea, Redboard's director also argued for the need to put pressure on China.

This means that diplomatic pressure must be placed on China, which supports North Korea, and measures must be taken against China's money laundering network that North Korea relies on.

He also proposed "indictments and subpoenas for Chinese banks used by organized crime in North Korea and China, and a cyber counterattack targeting the threat actors behind the theft."

Previously, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) pointed to North Korea's elite hacking organization 'Trader Trader' as the mastermind behind the theft of $6.3 billion (approximately 8.4 trillion won) in virtual assets from Binance on the 29th of last month.