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North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

economist.com

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Re: North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

#11

Post by boringg »

monero-xmr wrote: post #10
moremetadata wrote: post #3

Not bad for a supposedly backwards repressed regime, unless thats the least stolen compared to 1st world countries? It also exposes a wider problem the crypto community are not addressing.

The crypto currency world is hyper focused on stopping this, considering it is one of the main avenues that statists attack crypto with now that the environmental nag is gone since the switch to Proof of Stake. I would say, conservatively, the traditional banking and real estate markets are 10,000x worse than crypto markets, but are un-policed because it's hidden, unlike the public blockchain networks. The few scams…

That 10,000x worth sounds like its using specific numbers as opposed to hand wavy arguments for which crypto is predicated on. Glad you brought real numbers to the table.

Re: North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

#12

Post by crazygringo »

monero-xmr wrote: post #10
moremetadata wrote: post #3

Not bad for a supposedly backwards repressed regime, unless thats the least stolen compared to 1st world countries? It also exposes a wider problem the crypto community are not addressing.

The crypto currency world is hyper focused on stopping this, considering it is one of the main avenues that statists attack crypto with now that the environmental nag is gone since the switch to Proof of Stake. I would say, conservatively, the traditional banking and real estate markets are 10,000x worse than crypto markets, but are un-policed because it's hidden, unlike the public blockchain networks. The few scams…

> The crypto currency world is hyper focused on stopping this

Can you explain how?

I'm super curious because the whole point of crypto is you can't reverse transactions, and therefore crypto is only ever as secure as computer security generally, and there's nothing crypto can do about computer security generally.

Or are people coming up with some new paradigm here that fixes this somehow?

Re: North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

#14

Post by fumblebee »

ianpurton wrote: post #13

I didn't get passed the pay wall but my question is how do we know this? What's the trail of evidence that leads to this conclusion.

When you see an economist.com submission on HN, typically the top comment is a morally dubious but ever so helpful archive link to get around the paywall.

In this case: https://archive.ph/SUYp1

Re: North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

#16

Post by brucethemoose2 »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #8

I wonder how many ICBM can that get you... probably like 3 or something... - Found my answer: https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-syst... Not a lot...

The US mass produced warheads and icbms like they were candy canes. The unit costs for NK are probably higher, though maybe not dramatically so with newer tech to help.

Re: North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

#17

Post by bdcravens »

moremetadata wrote: post #3

Not bad for a supposedly backwards repressed regime, unless thats the least stolen compared to 1st world countries? It also exposes a wider problem the crypto community are not addressing.

The biggest risk with North Korea is seeing the state of the country, and underestimating the regime itself.

Re: North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

#19

Post by credit_guy »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #8

I wonder how many ICBM can that get you... probably like 3 or something... - Found my answer: https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-syst... Not a lot...

Maybe a few dozen.

Take the US Trident 2 [1]. Wikipedia lists a cost of $31 MM, in 2019 dollars, which would be about $37 MM today. With $1.3 BN you could buy 35 of those.

But the North Koreans are not buying their missiles from Lokheed-Martin. They are building them in house, so you'd expect them to pay much less for labor and materials.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II

Re: North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year

#20

Post by HPsquared »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #16
pelagicAustral wrote: post #8

I wonder how many ICBM can that get you... probably like 3 or something... - Found my answer: https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-syst... Not a lot...

The US mass produced warheads and icbms like they were candy canes. The unit costs for NK are probably higher, though maybe not dramatically so with newer tech to help.

Probably more hours of work to produce each one, but at a substantially lower hourly rate.
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