North Korean cryptocurrency thieves tricked a Binance software engineer into downloading malware onto their work-issued computer during a fake job interview process before last week’s record-breaking $6.3 billion heist.
In an incident report published on Tuesday, the cryptocurrency exchange said several techniques - including social engineering via fake job interviews, malware downloads, compromised internal AI tooling, endpoint takeover, and an “advanced transaction-authorization method” - led to the October 29 security breach.
“Our current investigation indicates that this was a sophisticated, multi-stage campaign,” the incident report said. “It was not a single isolated breach or a simple phishing incident.”
Over the weekend, the FBI attributed the theft to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking operation linked to Lazarus Group, known for combining espionage with massive cryptocurrency heists. The Pyongyang-backed crew is also highly adept at job market scams - both posing as IT workers, who are then hired by Western companies, and as potential employers to lure software engineers into downloading malware and infecting corporate devices.
It appears the Binance hack was a social engineering stunt. Can’t say I’m surprised. Often the biggest weaknesses in any system is the people running it.
Still, who the heck takes a job interview call on their office laptop??
I assumed they were doing the interview and sent the employee an updated cv or similar, but I was wrong
The Pyongyang-backed crew is also highly adept at job market scams - both posing as IT workers, who are then hired by Western companies, and as potential employers to lure software engineers into downloading malware and infecting corporate devices.
Fr, why use your current work laptop?
“The attackers also took steps to hide the malicious script and evade detection,”
But also, script contains comment “replace it with a malicious version”
Why is the FBI investigating? Bitcoin is deliberately untraceable (ish), private (ish), tax free currency, free from meddlesome government regulation and intererence. So why should tax funded law enfrcement for any country expend reaources investigating bitcoin related theft? These billionaires are all libertarians until they get fucked by hostile state actors and then it’s big government to the rescue.
What do you mean by deliberately untraceable? It’s built upon a block chain ledger that tracks all transactions. I’m more amazed by those that are able to avoid tracing with this currency.
Crime is crime.
Just deserts
North Korea has lots of tundra but I don’t think they have any deserts.
Tundras are generally deserts. One of those oddities of word definitions.
North Korea do so many scams and cyber thefts mostly aimed at America.
At least nothing of any real value was lost. Bitcoins are not really better than NFT, and those are worthless today. It’s just that bitcoin can be used for illegal activities, otherwise they have no use, but that’s apparently enough for some people to still believe they are worth something.
Some use crypto for illegal activities yes, but some just like their privacy, and it’s good that we have a means for people to continue to maintain their privacy in their financial dealings. Especially now that Donald has normalized the surveillance state to a formerly unimaginable degree.
And besides, the fees for transferring crypto internationally are significantly lower than transacting internationally through a bank, so saying there’s not utility for it isn’t exactly true.
Bitcoin does not protect privacy, that was a claim when it was new, but has been thoroughly debunked. Bitcoins are as traceable as any other digital payment.
Using it illegally is reserved for people or nations that are out of reach of the law.Aren’t distributed ledgers public? Once someone’s ID has been determined, aren’t their transactions publicly visible?
I think so. I’m not an expert in crypto, but I know that there are ways to connect identities to transactions, though my understanding is that it’s not a simple thing. You have to have enough data to connect a wallet to an ID, IIRC.
I read a really good book about it earlier this year: Tracers in the Dark. (Which I highly recommend. EXCELLENT book.)
