WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has charged three North Korean computer programmers in a broad range of global and destructive hacks, including targeting banks and a movie studio. That’s according to a newly unsealed indictment. It builds off an earlier criminal case brought in 2018. The new cases adds two additional North Korean defendants. Prosecutors say all three programmers are members of a military intelligence agency of the North Korean government. Law enforcement officials say the prosecution highlights the profit-driven motive behind North Korea’s criminal hacking. That’s a contrast from other adversarial nations like Russia, China and Iran who are generally more interested in espionage, intellectual property theft or even disrupting democracy.
