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Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
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Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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No. Australia's national money laundering assessment [0] is not virtue signalling as a cover for racism. There's a history of money laundering for terrorism, child exploitation, slavery, and drug trafficking. There's also a history of arrests, and government task force projects to try and change that. [0] https://www.austrac.gov.au/business/how-comply-guidance-and-...
There was also the "white Australia policy" though. And China is the perfect scapegoat, like NK, since they seldom make public statements, and when they do, the west tend to treat it as across the board false.
But the top Area Studies scholars are not working for the government. I hang out in quite a few Chinese telegram chats (mostly sysadmins and just bullshitting - the term translates well literally but carries a slightly different connotation in that it's not falsity per se but bragging/exaggeration OR falsity, depending on context). There's a pretty general sense of neo-imperialistic motives on the part of the west and it's hard to blame them considering that for a nation that wasn't annexed it effectively had very little to no say in the administration of various parts of its territories for 160 years. Whether out of arrogance or because there's a huge blind spot (or both), this has led to missing out on numerous opportunities in effectively gain leverage on the CCP in significant ways, like getting rid of the quota system for H1-B visas so those who were on F-1s and graduate can actually stay and work in the US, or give general asylum to the protestors against the Chinese takeover of HK, a cohort that is educated, have relevant skills, speaks English, and compared to the rest of China, are relatively wealthy. The official fear of a brain drain have been around since the 1880s - the Chinese Exclusion Act was the preferred policy of both the US and Chinese governments, one that helped nobody and legitimized racism parallel to Jim Crow. One would think that we'd be over that by now.
There's some chatter that there's a soft-coup since Xi haven't been leading the nightly 30 minutes of propaganda, probably for the first time since the 1980s the news, broadcast nationally, didn't lead off with some inane report of leadership meeting dignitaries. The truth is anybody's guess but an actual military coup is unlikely to occur after the Lin Biao incident. The fact that America doesn't even seem to be aware of this is telling, and in North Korea's case, even more amplified.
Also, a nation-state cannot by definite launder any money since money laundering is only a thing because the state wants its cut. But here, by their theory, all of the money is going to the nation-state so... what laundering are they talking about? Theft, perhaps. Expropriation? Sure. But laundering? That makes no sense unless you internalize that America or whoever is actually the world's policeman. Good luck with maintaining credibility with that outlook.
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#73Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would ne…
Only an American would ever entertain this idea without being at least a bit tongue in cheek about it. The US doesn’t own the Internet.
Out of interest I looked up who controls the DNS root servers:
Europe (2): RIPE and Netnod AB. RIPE is Europe’s RIR, run as a conference by European ISPs. Netnod is a Swedish ISP.
Asia (1): Project WIDE, part of the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
US (9): Verisign, Cogent, NASA, US Department of Defense, US Army, the University of Maryland, ISC (as in the Bind9 people), ICANN itself, and the University of Southern California.
The last two seem to have some overlap and there is probably a lot of overlap between all of these organisations.
Verisign runs two root servers which is why the list has twelve entries but the root servers run from A to M.
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> First consider that the internet was designed to withstand and endure attacks upon it. So long as at least one connection remains, the nodes thereof remain accessible. Tell me you haven't worked in network infrastructure without telling me you haven't worked in network infrastructure. > Next, consider that the authority of US sovereignty ends at US borders. The US legally cannot unilaterally do anything to anything…
>Tell me you haven't worked in network infrastructure without telling me you haven't worked in network infrastructure. Am I wrong, though? >I mean, sure, officially, when all laws are followed and in a friction-less plane this is correct. However the United States does all kinds of shit unilaterally outside it's own borders, literally all the time, You can just say we went and blew up Nordstream, you know.
> Am I wrong, though?
Yeah. Congestion makes a single-node Internet unusable.
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'd imagine it's pretty easy, too. You've already got the assets in a poorly-accountable and liquid state Alright, so walk me through it because I don't see how it's easier to wash than other ill-gained funds like cash. You robbed someone and now you sit on $200M worth of Bitcoin. How you unload them so you have cash you can use, when every transaction is traceable and any exchange willing to trade for those amount…
with clean funds launch a new token and create a liquidity pool on uniswap with another set of clean funds in a second address you buy that token in the liquidity pool with the dirty funds in the third address you also buy the token and dont stop buying, you use all the dirty funds the second address sells, and you just are another lucky crypto trader with another 10,000% gain, indistinguishable from any other crypto…
If you do this, the dirty funds need to connect to a different RPC server than your clean funds
dont use infura or a node in a data center on the same IP address
if youre not using your own node on your own network, you need to mask your IP address and think about who knows it. Tor works better than VPN for this
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#76Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would ne…
Someone did it a while ago: https://www.wired.com/story/north-korea-hacker-internet-outa...
don't bother with the above link if you're not subscribed to wired, use this instead:
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
You certain all those devices in black rooms[0] like Room 641A[1] are entirely passive? I'm not. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_room [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
What makes you think the same equipment would have the necessary mechanics and capacity for realtime mass-filtering? Even in America, I imagine there are many other budget priorities competing for a limited spook-fund, that would displace a "national censor-wall but indefinitely inactive and secret just in case we need it someday."
You know how the internet and things like Tor are products of the Department of Defense?
The State Department has been using the internet (and anonymization tools like Tor) to organize dissidents in foreign countries for various purposes, often coups. One example is the Arab Spring[1].
I'd wager they are very afraid of someone doing it back to them, and might have some capability in place. Even if it's just to shut the internet off for a time (like Pakistan and other nations have done during elections[0], maybe in response to US interference) or perhaps prevent connections to other nations/the rest of the world more generally.
[0]https://www.accessnow.org/campaign/2024-elections-and-intern...
[1]https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/arabstudquar.35.3.0255...
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#78Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don’t allow their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don’t allow their citizens to leave the country because they would ne…
Taking you seriously: I’m pretty sure NK has non-oceanic interconnects with both China and Russia. So unless your plan involves attacking within the internationally recognized borders of either and living with the consequences, the answer is “not easy.”
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#79US/Canada 2024, $3 billion in fines by US regulators, https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fi... > DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers. Canada 2018, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33918115 > An estimated $5.3 billion of laundered money into B.C. real e…
Another reason why we should only allow Canadian nationals to own real estate in Canada.
Re: Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
#80US/Canada 2024, $3 billion in fines by US regulators, https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fi... > DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers. Canada 2018, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33918115 > An estimated $5.3 billion of laundered money into B.C. real e…
Is there any reason to believe the Australian investment is related to money laundering or drug sales?
In my empirical experience, its more to do with stashing the proceeds of state capture by politically connected individuals in China.