Police repatriated and arrested a Lithuanian hacker in his 20s who stole about 1.7 billion won by di..

Police repatriated and arrested a Lithuanian hacker in his 20s who stole 1.7 billion won by distributing a malicious program that arbitrarily changed the target of sending virtual assets to Korea after a five-year and four-month investigation.

The National Police Agency's National Investigation Headquarters announced on the 28th that it has arrested a Lithuanian national A (29) in Georgia and repatriated him to Korea on charges of stealing virtual assets using a malicious program that changes the address of receiving virtual assets.

From April 2020 to January 2023, A distributed the malicious program 'KMSAuto' 2.8 million times. The program is installed on the victim's computer under the guise of a so-called "crack program" that can illegally obtain Microsoft's "window" authentication. After that, it uses a "memory hacking" method that manipulates the victim's virtual asset remittance program and turns the remittance address into the hacker's address.

There are 3,100 addresses of virtual assets that have been damaged around the world, and they have been extorted from virtual assets worth 1.7 billion won more than 8,400 times. According to the police, there are eight domestic victims, and the total amount of damage is 16 million won.

The police launched an investigation in August 2020 after receiving a report that "I remitted 12 million won worth of bitcoin and it was sent to the wrong address." The police analyzed the crime method and found out that A lived in Lithuania.

In December last year, in cooperation with the Lithuanian investigation authorities, they raided A's residence and secured key evidence such as mobile phones and laptops. Afterwards, the police arrested and repatriated A, who was entering Georgia from Lithuania in April through Interpol's red wanted list.

Park Woo-hyun, a cyber investigation review officer at the National Police Agency, said, "To prevent damage to malicious programs, we should be careful programs with unclear sources," adding, "In the future, the police will respond strictly to cybercrimes without borders by cooperating with law enforcement agencies around the world."