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.
But I thought all regulations were bad and just the govenrment stealing your money? Are you telling me they might have a purpose???
I work in HR. I am getting emails DAILY from data thieves pretending to be an actual employee asking I change their direct deposit account. Luckily I have access to each employee’s personal email info, so if what I get isn’t from their personal email I ignore it.
Stay vigilant out there. Well done.
On the bright side they were already looking for a new job. Since they definitely don’t have that old one anymore lol.
Finally, some consequences for having a convoluted interview process.
FBI alleges that it’s North Korea, North Korea publishes a proclamation that it’s not them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6rey4v53exgo
I’d like to see at least some detail that goes into attributing it.
Ah ha! Russia again!! Or maybe Iran.
I don’t know how this could be possible, but I think they’re both lying.
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??
Wtf, Everyone
A Finance company which has its production systems in the same network as worker computers which aren’t locked-down tight is basically amateur hour every hour of the day every day of the month every month of the year.
You can never assume that workers won’t do stupid shit like downloading random software into their work computers even when its a fuckingly obvious bad idea for most people to do such stupid shit - it only takes one idiot, naive fool or even momentary distraction of somebody who should’ve known better to end up with your network hacked, so you always treat such devices as possibly contaminated.
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?
Because you are trying to get a new job so fuck your current employer :D
But for real, I admit I actually did this since the interview time was during working hours and I am then, well, at work.
I don’t like taking a whole or half day off for an interview, so yeah. But I get that this is not possible for everyone.
I guess there is a point of giving no fucks you reach at some point, yeah. I’ve used the parking lot, but I was connected to different wifi.
The last time I had a work laptop, I did have to make an appointment with IT for them to install Firefox, because we couldn’t download any programs and it only came with chrome. It was incredibly annoying, but I guess I can appreciate it a little more now (but for real, why the appointment?).
Thinking about it more thoroughly though, I downloaded probably about 30k lawsuit filings over the course of my job there. Most were from trustworthy sources, but sometimes they were just in document repositories arranged by law firms.
I hope they have some way of securing that 🙃
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.
They have/had some pretty big food deserts.
Tundras are generally deserts. One of those oddities of word definitions.
“The attackers also took steps to hide the malicious script and evade detection,”
But also, script contains comment “replace it with a malicious version”
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.
I mean apparently it’s a good way to irreversibly move $6.3 billion very quickly, if you’re into that.
🤣🤣🤣
👍Unironically, it is.
It would cost significantly more to the owner of said crypto to move it via a bank. That’s partly why crypto is so appealing.
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?
Bitcoin has Layer-2 (aka Lightning) transactions which happen off chain. The off chain transactions aren’t recorded individually, just the gross amounts to set up funds to go off the chain and then to record the funds coming back onto the chain. Its possible to infer transaction information from timing of amounts going off chain to reconstruct the history, but I;m not sure how practical that is in a real world situation. Other crypto like Monero was designed with more privacy in mind, and is more immune to these types of forensics.
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.)
