March 25, 2022
How to Strengthen South Korea-US Cooperation on Combatting Cyber-enabled Financial Crime
Key logistical and structural differences between U.S. and South Korean intelligence and law enforcement agencies restrict enhanced coordination on crucial cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Although Washington and Seoul have previously cooperated on cyber-enabled financial crime cases, these joint efforts are often only in response to ongoing incidents and not preventative in nature. This significantly reduces their ability to predict and prevent future crimes as information sharing often occurs already after the initial hack and/or illicit cyber-activity has succeeded.
The United States and South Korea each possess unique strengths in combating the rise of cyber-enabled financial crime, but their true joint potential is largely untapped.
In likely response to rising levels of cyber-enabled financial crime, Washington and Seoul included specific language on creating a joint cyber working group to combat the spread of ransomware and online sexual exploitation in a May 2021 summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. However, the document outlining the summit failed to include coordination on issues related to the misuse of cryptocurrency and other financial technology – despite cybercriminals using crypto as a major source of financing for their illicit activity.
Dating back to roughly 2017, North Korean operatives have continuously employed ransomware to extort cryptocurrency from their victims and South Korea-based child pornography websites also request payments in cryptocurrency to view their illicit content. Including joint research and investigations on the exploitation of cryptocurrency and new financial technology is crucial to strengthening both U.S. and South Korean national security.
Read the full article from The Diplomat.
More from CNAS
-
No Grid, No Glory: What History Teaches Us About the Next Major War
Commentary
This article was originally published on The National Interest.The Trump Administration’s new National Security Strategy goes to great lengths to do what every good strategist...
By Will Rogers
-
Breaking the Rare Earths Dependency with Chris Kennedy
Podcast
Geoff sits down with Chris Kennedy to unpack the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and debate what it will take for the United States to overcome its dependenc...
By Geoffrey Gertz, Emily Kilcrease & Chris Kennedy
-
Commentary
Energy, Economics & Security / Technology & National Security
Recommendations for Promoting American AI AbroadStrategic Context and Program Objectives The American AI Exports Program is an ambitious and essential proposal to expand the reach of American AI technologies in foreign mar...
By Janet Egan, Geoffrey Gertz, Daniel Remler & Ruby Scanlon
-
Rational Security: The “Adverse Possession” Edition
Podcast
This week, Scott sat down with Lawfare Managing Editor Tyler McBrien and Contributing Editor and CNAS adjunct senior fellow Alex Zerden to talk through a few of the week’s big...
By Alex Zerden
