North Korean cryptocurrency thieves tricked a Binance software engineer into downloading malware onto their work-issued computer during a fake job interview process before last week’s record-breaking $6.3 billion heist.
In an incident report published on Tuesday, the cryptocurrency exchange said several techniques - including social engineering via fake job interviews, malware downloads, compromised internal AI tooling, endpoint takeover, and an “advanced transaction-authorization method” - led to the October 29 security breach.
“Our current investigation indicates that this was a sophisticated, multi-stage campaign,” the incident report said. “It was not a single isolated breach or a simple phishing incident.”
Over the weekend, the FBI attributed the theft to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking operation linked to Lazarus Group, known for combining espionage with massive cryptocurrency heists. The Pyongyang-backed crew is also highly adept at job market scams - both posing as IT workers, who are then hired by Western companies, and as potential employers to lure software engineers into downloading malware and infecting corporate devices.
At least nothing of any real value was lost. Bitcoins are not really better than NFT, and those are worthless today. It’s just that bitcoin can be used for illegal activities, otherwise they have no use, but that’s apparently enough for some people to still believe they are worth something.
I mean apparently it’s a good way to irreversibly move $6.3 billion very quickly, if you’re into that.
Unironically, it is.
It would cost significantly more to the owner of said crypto to move it via a bank. That’s partly why crypto is so appealing.
🤣🤣🤣
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Considering Bitcoin is almost entirely traceable, it is a really, really bad idea to use Bitcoin for illegal activity.
Except if you are a country like Russia or North Korea.
Yeah, a nation state actor can get away with using Bitcoin for illegal activity. Regular people, though, cannot.
Exactly. But the independence from government control was a HUGE selling point originally.
But it only works if you are legally immune from consequences. Like for instance Russia and North Korea.
And guess who has been using bitcoin to circumvent sanctions? 😋
Well, for everyone else Monero exists. It actually is truly untraceable.
Some use crypto for illegal activities yes, but some just like their privacy, and it’s good that we have a means for people to continue to maintain their privacy in their financial dealings. Especially now that Donald has normalized the surveillance state to a formerly unimaginable degree.
And besides, the fees for transferring crypto internationally are significantly lower than transacting internationally through a bank, so saying there’s not utility for it isn’t exactly true.
Aren’t distributed ledgers public? Once someone’s ID has been determined, aren’t their transactions publicly visible?
Bitcoin has Layer-2 (aka Lightning) transactions which happen off chain. The off chain transactions aren’t recorded individually, just the gross amounts to set up funds to go off the chain and then to record the funds coming back onto the chain. Its possible to infer transaction information from timing of amounts going off chain to reconstruct the history, but I;m not sure how practical that is in a real world situation. Other crypto like Monero was designed with more privacy in mind, and is more immune to these types of forensics.
I think so. I’m not an expert in crypto, but I know that there are ways to connect identities to transactions, though my understanding is that it’s not a simple thing. You have to have enough data to connect a wallet to an ID, IIRC.
I read a really good book about it earlier this year: Tracers in the Dark. (Which I highly recommend. EXCELLENT book.)
Bitcoin does not protect privacy, that was a claim when it was new, but has been thoroughly debunked. Bitcoins are as traceable as any other digital payment.
Using it illegally is reserved for people or nations that are out of reach of the law.