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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

#21

Post by oneoff786 »

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…

I like the use of “statists” to negatively refer to people who use facts to support their arguments.

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

#22

Post by arp242 »

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…

Money laundering is a crime, but not a scam. Besides, there's some nuance here: HSBC were fined for not doing enough to prevent it as required by law. You know, the kind of laws that don't even apply to crypto. "They are breaking rules but we are not!" is an easy claim to make if you have no rules but the others do.

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

#23

Post by DethNinja »

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.

They mostly correlate this by the methods used by APTs.

Each APT usually utilises a specific set of techniques to commit these heists: https://attack.mitre.org/groups/

Obviously perfect correlation is not possible but set of utilised techniques are usually enough to pinpoint the specific APT.

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

#26

Post by [deleted] »

fumblebee wrote: post #14
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

[deleted]

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

#27

Post by bell-cot »

fumblebee wrote: post #14
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

Having javascript disabled by default in your browser works fine on most HN-linked sites. Without waiting for someone to post an archive link.

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

#28

Post by H8crilA »

credit_guy wrote: post #19
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

Arms procurement costs are very hard to pin down due to the cost of R&D and the cost of logistical packages. The same system can "cost" X but also 3X, 4X or sometimes even more if all of the real costs are properly included.

Also, US strategic rocket weapons (ICBMs) are actually not the best in their class, as a result of post-soviet partial denuclearization. Many aren't even MIRV. This doesn't apply to submarines and bombers, those are top notch. Especially bombers, many decades ahead.

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

#29

Post by danielvf »

As a blockchain security guy, it's really easy to spot the occasional North Korean heists on Ethereum. The big tells are:

1. They hack computers not code. Their normal plan is to steal keys by compromising users and computers. This is in contrast to the normal "hack" that works by finding and exploiting bugs in code.

2. They immediately exfiltrate the stolen money back to the real world via bazillions of mule accounts that are already standing by. In contrast to the "normal" hacker who attempts to obfuscate and hide funds on-chain, and slip away with some at a far future date.

Here's a writeup from a company after the big 600 million dollar NK hack.

https://roninblockchain.substack.com/p/back-to-building-roni...

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

#30

Post by smcl »

rahen wrote: post #6
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.

> Not bad for a supposedly backwards repressed regime What do you mean by supposedly? > It also exposes a wider problem the crypto community are not addressing. What wider problem? That money (in any form) can be stolen by a malevolent state?

> What do you mean by supposedly?

The DPRK is often portrayed as incompetent, helpless state purely able to eke out an existence by the grace of China (to whom it is useful only as a sort of attack dog cum buffer state). So the fact that they've managed to run an operation that can steal this much crypto may come as a surprise to many. I don't imagine their intelligence agencies are quite on the same level of electronic warfare capabilities as USA, UK, Israel and friends, though.

> That money (in any form) can be stolen by a malevolent state?

Right but as we repeatedly saw in the last couple of years, a North Korean hacker could swindle some dope out of their $10k ape jpeg from across the globe at relatively little cost. They'll have a bit of a tougher job stealing that same $10k from someone's bank, from a safe deposit box, or hell even from a box under their bed. It requires another level of sophistication entirely and the costs and risks would be prohibitively high. I am sure if the North Korean state took issue with me personally and wanted to empty my bank account, they could probably make some headway ... but they'd likely get caught and they'd spend more time and effort doing so than they'd actually be able to retrieve.

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