The hackers stole more cryptocurrency in one attack than all the funds stolen by North Korean cyber criminals in 2024, when the rogue state’s cyber attackers made off with around $1.3bn in digital coins, according to cryptocurrency analysts Chainalysis.
Isn’t it only worth 1.5 billion if you manage to sell it? How would you liquidate this much crypto?
Launder it and slowly sell it off through sock puppets.
They’re a nation-state level actor, they have significant resources of their own and solid ties to both China and Russia, who are even more skilled and have even more resources.
Did Kim steal Musk’s jacket?
North Korea’s GDP would technically be up 5% from this. Great success.
Doesn’t cagr though.
Crypto once again showing why it’s either just a casino with extra steps or a way to buy drugs rather than a serious solution for any currency or real world transactions.
It’s so amazing and digital and modern and easy to steal.
Specifically too it’s very easy to steal in bulk. Sure scamming grandma and grandpa out of their life savings has way fewer safeguards with crypto than with fiat currency, but it’s absolutely still possible without crypto and happens all the time. This is the monetary equivalent of stealing nearly 16,000 kg of gold – something unthinkable with fiat currency.
Though someone did steal 3,000 kg of gold one time.
Holy moly. 3,000 kg of gold at today’s price would be $281,382,000 (281 million dollars). Gold is $93,794 per kg at the moment.
That’s fucking WILD, I have never read about that.
It is insane that you can do that kind of a thing just sitting in front of a laptop with Tails now, though.
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy
They made a TV mini-series about it a few years ago. It’s called The Gold. If you’re in the UK, it’s on BBC iPlayer. If not, then there may be other means of acquiring it!
Are there crypto scams? yes, and plenty of them. Can you buy drugs with them? sure (and I thinks that’s great!) Do either of the above statements get at the core issue here? not at all.
The issue here is not with the crypto itself. The issue here is the same issue that is regularly a problem anywhere software is deployed, digital security. The take away here is that many (all?) crypto exchanges are failing to properly secure their systems. Which is why the general rule that anybody investing in crypto should follow is never keep crypto in an exchange wallet unless you plan on trading it in the very short term. As an extension of that rule, you should never keep your crypto in a wallet that you don’t hold the private keys for. If you don’t have the private key for the wallet, it’s not your wallet. Not your wallet, not your crypto.
The take away here is that many (all?) crypto exchanges are failing to properly secure their systems.
When your adversary is a nation-state with an actual army of hackers that can work 24/7 and deploy 0-days, it’s hard to say for sure the exchange is at fault for not handling security properly. This isn’t a lone Kevin Mitnick pulling a stunt, this is literal cyber warfare.
I would say it is specifically a problem with crypto, i addition to what you said.
you wouldn’t be able to do the above with a bank. They’d just make the transaction not to have happened.
with crypto, e.g. btc, you’d have to convince 2-3 of the big mining pools to undo the transction, so random private actors. and it undo all other transactions done as well.
maybe that it happens is not due to crypto. That it cant be remedied is certainly because crypto.
I have never really understood exchanges tbh. Centralizing decentralized currency feels like getting the downsides of normal money/investments with fewer of the benefits.
Its because crypto doesn’t work for 90% of things like people want to too so you have to use an exchange to make it faster.
You know you could’ve asked what I already know instead of assuming it’s nothing and giving me the most basic 101 lecture all because I spoke ill of the almighty crypto. I mined for three years.
I don’t think that was an attack on your knowledge, but rather a disclaimer for other readers. I could be wrong, though!
Yeah, but crypto bros specifically told me “Blockchain! Anonymous cryptographic fungible NFT AI!”
Looks like hexbear will be funded after all
You joke, but it looks like they actually did manage to regain their domain. Not sure how.
Money most likely.
I heard they just a bunch of crypto they forgot about.
First of all, I love that this is an AOL link. AOL is still around, eh?
Second, isn’t crypto supposed to be trackable in the ledger? How are they hiding that much coin under a new name? That’s the whole point of crypto.
There are ways to clean crypto, by mixing it with other sources. See crypto mixers
Why would they need to hide it?
That’s a good point, but I’m not sure that’s in crypto’s favor. Since we know who now owns the stolen crypto, would someone buy it from them? Who is going to honor it? So, does the exchange just go defunct and everyone is out, or…?
Oh I’m sure that’ll settle things down. World peace can’t be that far away!
Any technical juicy deets?
They phished an employee and got cold-wallet access.
Agents from Pyongyang were able to breach the systems of Dubai-based exchange Bybit to steal the digital coin Ether, according to security analysts.
*More
Hackers gained access to Bybit’s internal systems using so-called “phishing” email, which prompted an employee to input their login details to a seemingly legitimate website that was actually compromised.
The hackers were then able to gain access to a so-called “cold wallet” – a supposedly secure cryptocurrency storage device that holds coins offline and away from the internet. When Bybit came to transfer funds from the offline wallet to its online systems, the hackers sabotaged the transfer and stole the funds.
So hot wallets?
No. From the article, phishing to get access to a cold wallet…
