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.
I work in HR. I am getting emails DAILY from data thieves pretending to be an actual employee asking I change their direct deposit account. Luckily I have access to each employee’s personal email info, so if what I get isn’t from their personal email I ignore it.
Stay vigilant out there. Well done.
Well, you just call to confirm. Like, yes, that address is fine, but any financial changes out to have a human confirmation process. A simple: did you…? Yes/no?
If they start spoofing, what’s the protocol?
Emails are nice because the messages often tack on routing, which is traceable so I hope you have a good IT team willing to filter.
If the email seems like it could be legit, I call the employee to confirm. We have a form the employee fills out to make the change that needs sensitive information, like their SSN and employee ID. For the stuff that’s obvious phishing I delete without responding.
But I thought all regulations were bad and just the govenrment stealing your money? Are you telling me they might have a purpose???
Amen brother, fiat has never been stolen or abused at all!
Fucking tool
In a way that directly impacted depositors, in a modern regulatory environment? Absolutely not. Name an example and prove me wrong.
On the bright side they were already looking for a new job. Since they definitely don’t have that old one anymore lol.
Finally, some consequences for having a convoluted interview process.
They took a job interview from their work machine… 🤦
I’ve seen people set up interviews with their work email.
I respect that. Really hitting all the “fuck this job” cylinders.
I faxed my resume to apply for a job with a hand written fax cover page from the place I worked at the time lol, and got it.
Fax. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time.
In a long time.
Yep. Mind numbingly stupid.
Well their personal computer didn’t get hacked.
I’ve been listening to old “Darknet Diaries” episodes recently, and stumbled on this episode about NK crypto heists and laundering which is very relevant for the topic
I highly recommend The Lazarus Heist. Probably the single most interesting piece of media I’ve ever consumed
It appears the Binance hack was a social engineering stunt. Can’t say I’m surprised. Often the biggest weaknesses in any system is the people running it.
I like how companies always emphasize how advanced and sophisticated the attack was, and it just boils down to somebody downloading something
Still, who the heck takes a job interview call on their office laptop??
A Finance company which has its production systems in the same network as worker computers which aren’t locked-down tight is basically amateur hour every hour of the day every day of the month every month of the year.
You can never assume that workers won’t do stupid shit like downloading random software into their work computers even when its a fuckingly obvious bad idea for most people to do such stupid shit - it only takes one idiot, naive fool or even momentary distraction of somebody who should’ve known better to end up with your network hacked, so you always treat such devices as possibly contaminated.
Wtf, Everyone
I assumed they were doing the interview and sent the employee an updated cv or similar, but I was wrong
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.
Fr, why use your current work laptop?
So, is it still a hot take to say that all cryptocurrency does is fund North Korea?
And money launder.
No it’s great for buying drugs too
Maybe the drugs are from NK too.
You joke but yeah… meth and superdollar
Sanctions working great lmao
FBI alleges that it’s North Korea, North Korea publishes a proclamation that it’s not them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6rey4v53exgo
I’d like to see at least some detail that goes into attributing it.
I don’t know how this could be possible, but I think they’re both lying.
Ah ha! Russia again!! Or maybe Iran.
People scoff at the mandatory infosec training for SOC II and ISO 27001 compliance, then download garbage to their work computer and lose $6B.
I’ll keep scoffing until employees get paid enough to care.
Why is the FBI investigating? Bitcoin is deliberately untraceable (ish), private (ish), tax free currency, free from meddlesome government regulation and intererence. So why should tax funded law enfrcement for any country expend reaources investigating bitcoin related theft? These billionaires are all libertarians until they get fucked by hostile state actors and then it’s big government to the rescue.
Bitcoin is far from untraceable. In fact, it’s one of the most traceable currencies that’s ever existed.
After all, you can see exactly what address sent exactly what amount to exactly what other address. All you have to do is compromise the addresses and then you know the people. And KYC from Exchanges does an incredibly good job at that.
ish. North Korea is still denying the hack, and I don’t think any of us can really prove it.
That’s because to do so, you really need subpoena power. If you are a nation state, you have the power to subpoena the exchanges and force them to give up information that they otherwise would not.
What do you mean by deliberately untraceable? It’s built upon a block chain ledger that tracks all transactions. I’m more amazed by those that are able to avoid tracing with this currency.
So many reasons. The company is American and it is holding value for Americans, so it’s beholden to the SEC and a thousand compliance laws in the US.
Crypto as you know it is anonymous, but exchanges to operate in the US have so much scrutiny and compliance. They’ve had Id verification for years.
So in this case yes, it was the largest heist on currency in history, and a massive chunk was Americans’. I’d be shocked if they didn’t investigate.
Not to mention if it’s happening with crypto, it’s happening g with standard banks too. Not investigating would leave everyone else vulnerable to it.
Yeah not to mention the founder of Binance already went to prison for fraud and then was pardoned by Trump, so there’s that
What happened to be your own bank? I thought having your bitcoin transactions being irreversible was a feature.
Only dirty fiat currency and banks let you reverse transactions or retrieve stolen dollars.
It is. Only idiots leave their crypto on an exchange.
Exchanges are a lot like public toilets. You should go in, do your business, and get the fuck out. But a lot of people decide that they like the public toilet, and they’ll just stick around and chat about the weather.
How is there supposed to be any market depth if traders can’t leave open orders on exchanges?
That’s what market makers are for. Average joe/jill don’t have open orders on the exchanges. They just have their crypto that they purchased sitting on their exchange account.
Crime is crime.
Just deserts
North Korea has lots of tundra but I don’t think they have any deserts.
They have/had some pretty big food deserts.
Tundras are generally deserts. One of those oddities of word definitions.
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.
🤣🤣🤣
👍
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.
They got the idea to do a fake interview and fuck the person up the ass from porn
“The attackers also took steps to hide the malicious script and evade detection,”
But also, script contains comment “replace it with a malicious version”
