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North Korean hackers stole a record $1.7B of crypto last year
- helsinkiandrew 4y agohttps://archive.ph/SUYp1 https://archive.ph/SUYp1
- moremetadata 4y agoNot 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.
- rahen 4y ago> 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?
- mountainriver 4y agoI think crypto has made it easier for them to steal money. I would be curious to see how much money oppressive regimes were able to steal and use before crypto to after
- smcl 4y agoYeah that's the part of the equation I'm curious about, so they stole "$1.7B" of crypto but were they able to actually get anything they can use out of it or does Kim Jong Un just really want to take part in the pay-to-play bored ape sewer game or whatever.
- ttyprintk 4y agoYears ago, I heard that the top industrial export from North Korea was counterfeit $100 bills. When traveling in the surrounding countries, people treat that denomination with more skepticism as you get closer to North Korea. Special paper-protecting and flaw-spotting techniques that I have never seen inside the USA.
- smcl 4y ago> 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.
- Salgat 4y agoIt's not really surprising. NK is able to outsource their education to Chinese universities, and with a division that can yield $1.7B in revenue, it's not surprising they invest in this skillset, even if the country at large is destitute and backwards.
- moremetadata 4y agoNorth Korea's internet access is through a fibre optic connection from China, you know that place with the supposed great firewall of china, whilst the likes of the UK hides the fact and 5eyes hides the fact its got total oversight of the internet including Tor! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_North_Korea#International_Internet_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_North_Ko...
- monero-xmr 4y agoThe 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 are exposed, like the HSBC money laundering scandal, dwarf all of the crime every committed via crypto. But we didn't even put HSBC out of business or put a single employee in jail! Here is the Danish money laundering fraud that just concluded with $2 billion in fines on $160 billion in laundered money https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/danske-bank-pleads-guilty-fraud-us-banks-multi-billion-dollar-scheme-access-us-financial https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/danske-bank-pleads-guilty-fra...
- boringg 4y agoThat 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.
- crazygringo 4y ago> 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?
- anonymousDan 4y agoWhy 'generally'? Why can't crypto systems be designed to be more secure than other software given what is at stake (e.g. by making the effort to formally verify systems/applications). Not saying it will happen but don't see why it is impossible.
- crazygringo 4y ago
- bdcravens 4y agoThe biggest risk with North Korea is seeing the state of the country, and underestimating the regime itself.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoSpot on. I once heard the Kims described as multimillionaires with one of the largest armies in the world [1] and nukes. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_...
- arp242 4y agoSize isn't everything when it comes to armies. See: Russia and Ukraine, USSR and the US in Afghanistan, Afghan army and Taliban, Boudica and the Romans, etc. Nuclear weapons and the fortified long-range artillery that can shell Seoul are the main point of concern, which are essentially a small-scale version of cold war era mutually assured destruction. The number of people in the army as such? I'm not so sure that's really something that's all that meaningful.
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pelagicAustral 4y agoI wonder how many ICBM can that get you... probably like 3 or something... - Found my answer: https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-systems-really-cost/ https://www.brookings.edu/what-nuclear-weapons-delivery-syst... Not a lot...
- brucethemoose2 4y agoThe 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.
- HPsquared 4y agoProbably more hours of work to produce each one, but at a substantially lower hourly rate.
- credit_guy 4y agoMaybe 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGM-133_Trident_II
- H8crilA 4y agoArms 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.
- 4y ago
- bparsons 4y agoAt last. Someone has found a real world use case for crypto.
- Oxidation 4y agoI thought getting money to places governments didn't want to get money to was one of the explicit aims of cryptocurrency.
- input_sh 4y agoHey that's not fair! It's actually the third real world use case, behind getting better drugs than from your local dealer and the entirety of the ransomware industry.
- ianpurton 4y agoI 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.
- fumblebee 4y agoWhen 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 https://archive.ph/SUYp1
- DethNinja 4y agoThey 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/ https://attack.mitre.org/groups/ Obviously perfect correlation is not possible but set of utilised techniques are usually enough to pinpoint the specific APT.
- ascotan 4y agohttps://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-biggest-year-ever-for-crypto-hacking/ https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-biggest-year-ever-... Seems like most of this theft is happening when people port currency between exchanges and the bridge is vulnerable.
- 55555 4y agoI wonder how much their hackers stole using bank wires? Surely they are doing both.
- arp242 4y agoEstimated GDP of North-Korea is around $16B (2019); just for context.
- londons_explore 4y agoAnd stolen crypto is more comparable to the import/export figure... And exports were $142M in 2020.
- v3ss0n 4y ago10 years worth
- qwerty1793 4y ago[flagged]
- arp242 4y agoWhat?
- Willish42 4y agoLooking at other countries on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi..., North Korea is near the middle of the pack too. Really puts into perspective how enormous an amount of money this is by most countries' standards.
- danielvf 4y agoAs 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-ronin-security-breach https://roninblockchain.substack.com/p/back-to-building-roni...
- nhooyr 4y ago> 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. That's the primary way hacks are conducted by most hackers. Hackers are primarily social engineers, not technical. Technical hackers are extremely rare regardless of nationality.
- ourmandave 4y agoThe NSA called, they want their 0-day exploits back.
- zwkrt 4y agoIt's not that they don't exist, but the easiest way to gain access to a computer system is always going to be to ask for the password. https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- Cpoll 4y agoI have no evidence for this, but my feeling was always that the highest-volume exploits were just having a bot run yesterday's Day-0 on every IP listening on a port. You can't get that kind of volume by calling people and asking for their password. If you leave an unsecured mail server accessible to the internet, it'll start sending spam emails within 30 minutes. On the other hand, phishing emails are also automated, and that's essentially asking for the password.
- NelsonMinar 4y ago"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 proposed alternate definition: "mixers - international money laundering services where illegally obtained cryptocurrency can be mixed with other fraud proceeds making it harder for the legal system to trace". (The definition I really would like: "mixers - services that look to hide your funds but are actually operated by intelligence agencies to track illegal activity". I imagine at least one mixer is a honeypot of sorts.)
- judge2020 4y agoI thought the ultimate goal was using legitimate exchanges as your mixer, since if a mixer only handles illegal crypto, chances are the funds can be traced to every destination address and the exchanges are tasked with reporting anything that comes from those addresses to federal law enforcement. The only real anonymity is in tornado cash.
- earnesti 4y agoBasically almost all custodial crypto exchanges and services function as mixers, as they don't separate customer funds. Using Blockchain analysis you can see that certain transaction likely belongs to certain service, but to get the details you have to file a data request, and hope that the service has done the KYC properly.
- acidtakes1 4y agoI 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.
- zht 4y agoCan I use an RPG-7 to kill animals like bears that threaten my life on my property? Yes. It’s definitely usable for non nefarious activities. Should I be demonized for having one in my house? Probably
- onewheeltom 4y ago[flagged]
- bogomipz 4y agoThere's a really good 12 episode BBC podcast called "The Lazarus Heist" that details the extent of this state enterprise. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xtvg9 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xtvg9
- drexlspivey 4y agoThere is also the Darknet Diaries "Bangladesh Bank Heist" episode https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/72/ https://darknetdiaries.com/transcript/72/
- exo762 4y agoWith our current state of cybersecurity (total shambles), we worry about NK stealing rather modest amounts of money. While relying exclusively on cybersecurity to prevent SkyNet scenario. Fun times.
- rishishah20 4y agoNever ever use your savings to invest in Crypto, if you want to invest only invest 2 to 10 percent what you make is still risky.
- trpv 4y agoHow is your personal opinion on investing in crypto relevant here?
- mattmcknight 4y agoI suppose one question is whether they sold it or they are now HODL-ing $170M of crypto.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoAnd they said crypto has no use cases /s
- baby 4y agoI'm wondering how much money trafficking and theft happens in the traditional finance world. It's great that we can analyze so much of what's happening in cryptocurrencies as most are open for the world to see.
- ourmandave 4y agoLike Binance audits? =D
- miguelazo 4y agoIt may be a totalitarian dictatorship, but this is totally expected behavior given the sanctions in place against them. Sanctions that amount to collective punishment, which is supposedly illegal under international law. Perhaps if the sanctions were reduced/removed, they’d feel like this sort of activity was less necessary/justified to get hard currency.
- magwa101 4y ago[dead]
- hnthrowaway0315 4y agoHow do they use the $$? I guess it's not easy to convert to USD so the only option is on black market? Some vendors say chip vendors or weapon vendors may be willing to take crypto?
- paulpauper 4y agoAlso, as prices falls, presumably these figures will need to be downgraded? I don't think they are cashing out this crypto, but probably most of it stays dormant in wallets. Crypto falls so fast, likely this figure will be downgraded by a magnitude of 5 or more by next year . Putting an exact figure is hard.
- eunos 4y agoThey launder it up in Macau supposedly
- droptablemain 4y agoYou know, it's possible they wouldn't have to resort to such things if we weren't intent on sanctioning them to death.
- Salgat 4y agoWhat makes you think they'd behave any differently?
- droptablemain 4y agoAre you implying the Korean people are inherently "evil" or something?
- sebzim4500 4y agoWhat a strange comment. If anything, he was implying that the rulers of NK are evil and he didn't even really say that.
- Salgat 4y agoNo, and if anything South Korea is proof of their potential. What's evil is the dictatorship holding back North Koreans.
- pwthornton 4y agoHow can you steal $1.7B of nothing?
- tunnuz 4y agoFor anyone intrigued by this, and also into listening podcasts, and I can totally recommend “The Lazarus Heist”.
- shp0ngle 4y agoThat’s… not that much? I mean it’s about what Meta spends in one and a half months on metaverse
- thatgerhard 4y agoHow would they turn that into usable currency over there?
- tpmx 4y agoPRC and its banks tend to be helpful towards NK.
- shayanbahal 4y agoThat is peanuts comparing to how much was lost in FTX, 3AC, Celcius, etc.
- rr888 4y agoNot really FTX customer assets were about $8 bil and they have $5 bil?
- joejoesvk 4y agowhere do they get such skilled people?
- danrocks 4y agoChina
- dwighttk 4y agoI'm guessing numbers are real hard to get for North Korea's GDP, but a couple places I looked[1] showed it on the order of tens of billion USD! [1]CIA world fact book and world bank (both a few years old)
- TacticalCoder 4y agoI 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.
- danrocks 4y agoIt's most likely an operation run from China with cover from the NK government.
- kwere 4y agoit could also easily be a chinese operation funded by triads (they are extremily huge and tolerated from the CCP) and/or "dark" chinese political factions operating from NK sharing loot with the Kims. Even if they take all their gifted kids and put them in special academis could they create the enviroment where the necessary critical thinking is developed?
- drexlspivey 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_Group
- djmips 4y agoCannot photoshop a picture but CAN make nukes. I think your logic is a bit faulty. It's not written down anywhere that a weakness in something you consider obvious and easy should preclude great strength in other areas. For example, recall that the former Soviet Union had many gaffes that could be mocked and yet had some of the finest space technology that's even still being used today.
- sandworm101 4y agoI care less about how much they stole than about how much they sold. Crypto is all well and good, but how they sell it for cash or products to avoid sanctions should be the lead story. Stealing crypto hurts crypto investors. Avoidance of international sanctions hurts innocent people, mostly poor people living under an oppressively regime who have no connection to crypto.
- MarcellusDrum 4y agoInternational sanctions hurts innocent people. Who do you think is suffering more from the sanctions, Assad or the poor Syrians?
- dontlaugh 4y agoExactly. Evading sanctions saves innocent lives.
- supernova87a 4y agoI wonder how big the pressure/temptation is for a North Korean, hacking for the state (presumably), to escape with a couple hundred coins and defect? I'm sure the repercussions / penalties must be huge, but then so are the amounts they must be seeing day by day, compared to average standard of living in N. Korea. Or maybe this is a cadre of military / public conscripted workers who regard this hacking as a patriotic service even?
- appleiigs 4y agoProbably not worth the multi-generational punishment.
- mrfumier 4y agoWhat makes you think a North Korean would like to escape ? They are all brainwashed to think they live in the best country in the world. We have testimony of North Korean even thinking the great leader could read their mind.
- oluckyman 4y agoSpeculating on crypto is like gambling where the house takes a 50% cut.