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North Korean hackers linked to theft from crypto gift card service

Nknews • March 18, 2026

North Korean cybercriminals stole virtual funds from a cryptocurrency gift card service and accessed over 18,000 customer purchase records, the Sweden-based company announced on Tuesday.

In a statement posted on social media , Bitrefill said attackers breached its systems on March 1 and “exploited” its gift card stock and supply chain to steal cryptocurrency. It did not disclose the value of the stolen amount.

North Korean cybercriminals stole virtual funds from a cryptocurrency gift card service and accessed over 18,000 customer purchase records, the Sweden-based company announced on Tuesday.

Shreyas Reddy is the Lead Correspondent at NK News, based in Seoul. He previously worked as a researcher at BBC Monitoring, where his work focused on news and key people and organizations from the Korean Peninsula, Japan, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Follow him on Twitter.

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This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.

Bitrefill Cyberattack Linked to North Korea's Lazarus Group Exposes Customer Data Bitrefill, a crypto e-commerce platform, disclosed a cyberattack that began on March 1, 2026, attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group. The breach started with a compromised employee laptop, allowing attackers to access sensitive infrastructure, including parts of the database and cryptocurrency wallets. Approximately 18,500 purchase records were affected, revealing email addresses, crypto payment addresses, and metadata like IP addresses. Out of these, around 1,000 records containing encrypted customer names were also potentially accessed. Bitrefill detected the breach through unusual supplier purchasing patterns and took all systems offline to contain the incident. The company is working with incident responders and law enforcement while restoring normal operations. They plan to absorb the financial losses through operational capital and are enhancing their security measures. 8 sources 76

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North Korean hackers linked to theft from crypto gift card service

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Attack Types (2)

Companies (1)

Countries (1)

MITRE ATT&CK (1)