North Korea drives onchain malware surge, CoinEx shuts: Asia Express

North Korea and Iran account for the majority of onchain malware, while Malaysia has been named among the most crypto curious Islamic nations.

North Korean and Iran linked hackers were responsible for the majority of the 420% increase this year in malware on public blockchains according to a Chainalysis report. 

State-linked hackers accounted for roughly two-thirds of new activity whereby attackers stored malware instructions or infrastructure information on public blockchains.

Chainalysis also identified UNC5342, a North Korea linked group, to previously unattributed activity spanning Tron, Aptos and BNB Smart Chain.

Chainalysis said using public blockchains increases the durability of malware campaigns because the stored information remains accessible after domains, servers or code repositories are taken down. In 2025, North Korean hackers used a similar technique called EtherHiding to place crypto-stealing code in smart contracts.

North Korea (DPRK) is now using remote workers from third countries, including Iran and Lebanon, to pass job interviews, after which the positions are taken over by North Korean operatives. The aim is infiltrate US companies and obtain money to fund its weapons programs, NBC reported.

South Korean police have referred 18 Polymarket users to prosecutors in an illegal gambling investigation that had identified 26 users in total by analyzing publicly available blockchain data.The users had collectively wagered about 17.6 billion won (worth $12.7 million) on Polymarket, which does not collect users real names or verify identities.  

Authorities said that Polymarket transactions constitute illegal gambling under South Korea’s Criminal Act because users stake assets on outcomes that cannot be predicted with certainty. 

After last week’s controversy over a plan to hand over as much as 20% of its fully diluted shares to executives, Metaplanet has now slashed the Series 10 stock pool.

Metaplanet will reduce the number of potential shares underlying the rights from 319.464 million to 188.19 million, and reset the conversion ratio to the level it was before its September 2025 international share offering.

The change will extinguish more than $220 million in warrant value and increase the company’s Bitcoin per fully diluted share by about 8.8%, according to Metaplanet.

The South China Morning Post says crypto industry insiders are urging Hong Kong policymakers to seize the opportunity opened up by the failure of the CLARITY vote in the US.