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North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

abc.net.au

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Re: North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

#31

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

wodenokoto wrote: post #25

Since the ledgers are public, how difficult is it to black list individual bitcoins? E.g, have the feds do a public list of blacklisted coin ids and simply say that accepting these coins is against whatever compliance is necessary for a business to operate crypto in the USA and Europe. Then when some realestate agency is about to sell an apartment in Dubai for bitcoins they’re gonna be “no, not those. We can add them…

anyone with the capability to deploy this would presumably have a conflict of interest due to the overall value dropping due to inability to use it as a crime currency.

Re: North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

#32

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

resolutebat wrote: post #28
GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #20

No evidence is presented that North Korea was involved.

This is not new news, and the role of North Korean hackers in cybercrime is well documented. https://www.trmlabs.com/post/inside-north-koreas-crypto-heis... https://go.chainalysis.com/rs/503-FAP-074/images/Crypto_Crim...

No evidence is presented that North Korea was involved in these links either.

BTW, 1 security vendor flagged this URL as malicious

https://www.virustotal.com/gui/url/731411888985ad777850f6896...

Re: North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

#33

Post by posting_mess »

wodenokoto wrote: post #25

Since the ledgers are public, how difficult is it to black list individual bitcoins? E.g, have the feds do a public list of blacklisted coin ids and simply say that accepting these coins is against whatever compliance is necessary for a business to operate crypto in the USA and Europe. Then when some realestate agency is about to sell an apartment in Dubai for bitcoins they’re gonna be “no, not those. We can add them…

I could be off, its been a while since ive been in crypto - take with a pinch of salt;

Bitcoins dont really exist, they aren't a row with a "uuid" that we can just say "block bitcoin X". Its a ledger so you are worth the sum of transactions on the ledger against "wallet x" at any particular time. Blocks are really just "diffs" and if you sum those diffs you get to a "balance" that the network can verify and allow you to spend.

So when you want to block "some bitcoins" you have to "follow the money", which will get you to wallet address. It's easy to block a single wallet address but the the criminals just split that one bitcoin into 10K addresses, now you have to follow that set of transactions and block 10K addresses.

The implications / problem gets worse as you consider finical crimes like in the UK, gangs will transfer £1K/£2k to some young persons bank and ask them to with draw 90% of it. Should we permanently remove a young person from the network cause of 1 mistake? Should we force them to go through the risk of setting up a new address?

Then of course the mixers / LN / complicated transaction tree's (blockchian hoping, ETC) - its a bit of nightmare.

Its not unsolvable, but I cant imagine its an easy task by any metric.

Re: North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

#36

Post by TacticalCoder »

NK is a country where there are still people eating roots and where they couldn't even photoshop properly a hoovercraft in a picture. WTF. Just seriously WTF.

We're literally talking about a country where computer-savvy people cannot even photoshop a picture.

I don't buy it that this country has the world's top hackers (no matter how often that it repeated by mainstream media) and I don't buy it that NK is thriving thanks to Bitcoin.

What I do believe though is that North Korea is the ultimate boogeyman.

Re: North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

#37

Post by T-zex »

jongjong wrote: post #34

That's fair enough. People are so dumb investing in these scam crypto projects and ignoring all the good, secure projects, I feel safer knowing that their money is now in North Korea's hands.

Where should I find all the good, secure projects?

Re: North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

#38

Post by capableweb »

Viewed with another lens, North Korea has quickly become one of the biggest production penetration testers, with a focus on making the cryptocurrency industry safer by demonstrating how much security some exchanges are lacking. If these exchanges actually did their job and hired competent people, maybe they wouldn't frequently lose user's funds.

All for the cost of ~$US1.65 billion per year. I wonder if this would be cheaper or more expensive than a high-profile security consultancy covering the same surface area.

Re: North Korea making billions from stolen cryptocurrency

#39

Post by capableweb »

romwell wrote: post #13
Scoundreller wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NK needs to pass some laws making crypto wallets outside of NK illegal. Then it can all be categorized under asset seizure.

>NK needs to pass some laws making crypto wallets outside of NK illegal. Then it can all be categorized under asset seizure. Sure, it would be seizure anywhere they have jurisdiction. Which isn't anywhere outside NK, rendering that point moot.

Wouldn't it be enough that someone located not-in-the-US to do any sort of business with a person in the US, for the US government to now consider that part of their jurisdiction and get involved? Just one random example from Wikipedia, but there are a bunch more cases of the US acting "outside of their jurisdiction": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shutdown_of_Sky_Global

Similarly, I guess North Korea could look at things the same way.

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