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The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

bbc.com

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Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#31

Post by londons_explore »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #24
tester756 wrote: post #15

what's so elite about them? >In January 2015, an innocuous-looking email had been sent to several Bangladesh Bank employees. It came from a job seeker calling himself Rasel Ahlam. His polite enquiry included an invitation to download his CV and cover letter from a website. In reality, Rasel did not exist - he was simply a cover name being used by the Lazarus Group, according to FBI investigators. At least one person…

I agree. Just a bit of social engineering and a trojan. The main difference is that they know they have their country's backing and they don't need to account for that risk, allowing them to aim higher.

Does having your countries backing help that much?

I assume hackers in other countries simply use a few layers of tor and bounce boxes.

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#32

Post by igou »

I feel like as somebody that works in tech, infosec media tends to feel too dense, or overdramatised (nothing against the BBC writers, I don't expect them to be super technical)

The best middleground I found was Sandworm by Andy Greenberg. Does anybody know of similar works?

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#33

Post by rjmunro »

magicsmoke wrote: post #21
cinntaile wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hackers have a lot more access to information than regular citizens because they need it to do their job, but it would be interesting to know how that affects the defection rate.

Probably higher than your average citizen without access to classified information, but not high enough to make defection a common occurrence that significantly hampers intelligence work. Some hackers may be disillusioned with the system, but most are socially conditioned to accept it as better than the alternative, imposed by external enemies and pressures, or not their problem. Defection is also not unique to autho…

Also defection can be very bad news for the rest of your family and friends who you leave behind.

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#34

Post by rjmunro »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #9

Hmm, this reads more like cheap entertainment rather than rigorous reporting. Was the Sony hack really done by the North Koreans [1]? "Journalists" just repeating what the FBI say make me doubt their seriousness. [1] https://talglobal.com/knowledge-center/hack-at-sony-pictures...

“But North Korea is better than that. They would not steal all the other movies and not grab The Interview. I am convinced that this is an inside job.”

Surely the fact that The Interview was the one movie they did not want to "grab" indicates that there was something about that movie. Perhaps they grabbed the others to spread them freely on pirate sites, but didn't want to spread The Interview because their whole aim was to make sure no one could ever see it.

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#35

Post by jialutu »

> thieves had gained access to a key part of Bangladesh Bank's systems, called Swift

Eh, what? I recall that to get access to SWIFT, you would require a SWIFT USB stick. How would a hacker be able to access SWIFT without the USB stick? This story doesn't smell right to me.

Here is a link for SWIFT Alliance Lite 2:

https://www.swift.com/our-solutions/interfaces-and-integrati...

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#36

Post by magicsmoke »

rjmunro wrote: post #33
magicsmoke wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably higher than your average citizen without access to classified information, but not high enough to make defection a common occurrence that significantly hampers intelligence work. Some hackers may be disillusioned with the system, but most are socially conditioned to accept it as better than the alternative, imposed by external enemies and pressures, or not their problem. Defection is also not unique to autho…

Also defection can be very bad news for the rest of your family and friends who you leave behind.

Even in a nonauthoritarian country, defecting means you'll never return again to see your friends and family anyways. Given that, defectors probably consider making a political stand more important than their personal connections regardless of what happens after they leave. Not everybody has a loving family and close friends they can't give up.

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#37

Post by jetzzz »

magicsmoke wrote: post #36
rjmunro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also defection can be very bad news for the rest of your family and friends who you leave behind.

Even in a nonauthoritarian country, defecting means you'll never return again to see your friends and family anyways. Given that, defectors probably consider making a political stand more important than their personal connections regardless of what happens after they leave. Not everybody has a loving family and close friends they can't give up.

You can't return but what is preventing them to come to your new home. Snowden's girlfriend moved to Russia and I think any of his family members can visit him if they want.

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#38

Post by BTCOG »

Not spoken about here is the fact that Lazarus __did__ make off with well over a billion dollars in funds by hacking numerous cryptocurrency exchanges around Asia and got away with it, too.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/02/09/north...

Oh, and this is just KuCoin they're talking about here. They stole well over $3 billion more from several other exchanges in 2017-2018. All the exchange hacks back then on the various Asian exchanges are attributed to them. Really likely they made off with upward of $5 billion in today's terms of all sorts of altcoins.

https://www.coindesk.com/north-korean-hacking-group-lazarus-...

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#39

Post by krylon »

jetzzz wrote: post #37
magicsmoke wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in a nonauthoritarian country, defecting means you'll never return again to see your friends and family anyways. Given that, defectors probably consider making a political stand more important than their personal connections regardless of what happens after they leave. Not everybody has a loving family and close friends they can't give up.

You can't return but what is preventing them to come to your new home. Snowden's girlfriend moved to Russia and I think any of his family members can visit him if they want.

I doubt you can just move out of North Korea, especially if your significant other or close relative has just defected.

Re: The Lazarus heist: How North Korea almost pulled off a billion-dollar hack

#40

Post by magicsmoke »

jetzzz wrote: post #37
magicsmoke wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in a nonauthoritarian country, defecting means you'll never return again to see your friends and family anyways. Given that, defectors probably consider making a political stand more important than their personal connections regardless of what happens after they leave. Not everybody has a loving family and close friends they can't give up.

You can't return but what is preventing them to come to your new home. Snowden's girlfriend moved to Russia and I think any of his family members can visit him if they want.

I meant that if he was willing to put his family through that much trouble, they probably weren't that close in the first place. In which case, what does or doesn't happen to family left behind isn't a large factor in deciding to defect.
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