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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

#141

Post by dwighttk »

Closi wrote: post #92
bsamuels wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do you feel the same way about Tor? If 99% of Tor's volume is helping laundering international drug trade money, distributing CSAM, etc, should it be demonized as well?

Intentional consealment of illegal internet traffic isn't a crime (the crime is just the crime). Intentional consealment of illegal financial transactions is a crime in-and-of itself (the crime is money laundering, which is a seperate offence to the original criminal activity that the money came from).

conspiracy to commit a crime is often an additional charge (IANAL)

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

#144

Post by dwighttk »

H8crilA wrote: post #28
credit_guy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

(NB: Trident is an SLBM)

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

#145

Post by TacticalCoder »

I call complete total and utter bullshit.

I don't buy, for a second, this narrative that NK would have elite hackers.

Do you guys realize how retarded that country is?

Everytime the subject comes up I can't but say we're talking about the country where official propaganda pictures trying to make believe they have military hoovercraft (as if it was a cool thing btw) are badly photoshopped.

A country with a total GDP of not even $20 billion and which cannot correctly Photoshop propaganda pictures simply doesn't have great hackers. The heist alone would be 10% of their GDP FFS.

What I do believe is that another nation state used to do very dirty things is putting the blame on NK.

But --and that's not a stab at the economist in particular-- mainstream media were also telling us that SBF was an altruistic genius making billions in arbritrage trades and that he'd make the world a better place by being an effectuive altruist.

In other words: I read between the lines.

And I take the "I cannot photoshop a picture but I can haxx0r 1.7 bn a year" with a gigantic pinch of salt.

And so should you.

P.S: how do we "know" it's NK? "Becuz them IPs are from NK". Yeah. Exactly.

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

#146

Post by ETH_start »

NelsonMinar wrote: post #32

"mixers—large digital pools where crypto owners can deposit funds to obscure their origins." I have a quibble with articles about cryptocurrency fraud. They always get around to mixers and then they define it as if it were some relatively legitimate thing, like an odd bank. "large digital pools", "deposit funds". You have to get to the last phrase ("obscure their origins") to understand what mixers really are. A prop…

Smart contract based mixers like Tornado Cash are just code for encrypting transactions. The only reason that a large proportion of Tornado Cash transactions were criminal in origin is that the legitimate parties were largely scared off from using it, because of the legal uncertainty around it, with people fearing what exactly ended up happening - with OFAC sanctioning the actual code - happening.

This left only the bravest parties, and criminals to use it, leading to a high proportion of users being criminals.

If it weren't for that uncertainty about the legal treatment TC would receive from government (say if Congress passed legislation explicitly providing a right to use financial privacy technology), a huge proportion of the whole crypto economy would have been using Tornado Cash, as they should be, because privacy is an absolute bare minimum for a functioning financial system.

The conceptual treatment you're giving transaction encryption is to treat privacy as criminal. This is an ideological outlook that promotes putting total trust and faith in a small elite in government and finance to engage in warrantless dragnet surveillance of every one's financial transactions.

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

#147

Post by ETH_start »

throwaway290 wrote: post #63
axlee wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 99% of BTC mixers' volume is helping laundering international drug trade money, arms or human trafficking, it's not exactly hard to demonize mixing itself. I have no data to base this on, but I assume that privacy absolutists are a tiny, tiny drop in the pool of blood and crime.

Privacy absolutists are free to deal in cash. Whatever amounts they send and receive, criminals and dictators do orders of magnitude more and people suffer as a result. If it wasn't so sad it would be funny that the countries with highest levels of freedom and least corruption tend to be the ones with most vocal privacy absolutists...

The most powerful states don't need to launder any money, since they can just pass a law legitimizing any action they do, with no need to hide the funds generated from any one else.

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

#148

Post by ETH_start »

snthd wrote: post #97
acidtakes1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why technology that provides a modicum of privacy must be demonized. It must be for money laundering and criminals. It can't have a legitimate use case. Is it used for nefarious activities? Of course, but not exclusively so.

GNU Taler[0] provides a "modicum of privacy" and isn't demonized. [0] https://taler.net

GNU Taler lets the government surveil people's transactions.

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

#149

Post by ivalm »

eterps wrote: post #108
wpietri wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If 99% of Tor's volume is helping laundering international drug trade money, distributing CSAM, etc, should it be demonized as well? Easy answer: Yes! Although I think it would be hard to call it demonizing when something is already 99% demons.

Should any tech that conceals IP addresses be demonized? Or just Tor?

Depends if it is being overwhelmingly used for criminal activity.

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

#150

Post by H8crilA »

dwighttk wrote: post #144
H8crilA wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

(NB: Trident is an SLBM)

You're right! I don't know why but I was thinking about the Minuteman all the time.
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