Hackers stole billions in crypto to keep North Korea’s regime afloat

https://www.wsj.com/world/asia/north-korea-cryptocurrency-580d7d3f

by Bostonian • 1 year ago

125 141 1 year ago

wsj.com

Bostonian• 1 year ago

https://archive.is/1vkXG

josefritzishere• 1 year ago

As a currency... crypto just seems worse and worse. There is no FDIC for crypto.So this is just gone.

LinuxBender• 1 year ago

What's worse, it's just a repeat of the 1920's as described here [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpqreZlmHGU [video][8 mins][cnn interview]

Kapura• 1 year ago

When i look around at all the positive innovations cryptocurrency has failed to deliver, it really does seem like they invented a currency exclusively useful for doing crimes.

MrMcCall• 1 year ago

And how much money was made off of companies that were created to support cryptocurrencies?

Does anyone around here know of any?

Bueller?

Pixelbrick• 1 year ago

Dirty money for dirty deeds...

madcow2011• 1 year ago

and these dirty deeds weren't even done dirt cheap!

af782• 1 year ago

This is the opinion of Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman too, in his post Crypto is for Criming https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/crypto-is-for-criming.

dist-epoch• 1 year ago

Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman famously estimated in 1998 that the impact of the Internet on the economy will be no more than that of the fax machine.

yayitswei• 1 year ago

Same Krugman who wrote "Bitcoin is Evil" in 2013.

wil4212• 1 year ago

My pet theory is some government agency created bitcoin for one of two reasons:

Tracking financial transactions (open ledger).

Funding dark ops.

The whole Natoshi riding into the sunset after bitcoin booms, like an old Western movie, is not very plausible IMHO.

rtkwe2• 1 year ago

It is certainly odd there's been nothing from the inventors not even using the vast wealth they have squirreled away. The alternative which is honestly kind of funny is that they lost their keys so can't access the coins and thus coming forward as the inventor would just put a target on their back for people who might want to steal their keys.

shaky-carrousel• 1 year ago

Most of the time, the difference between crimes and ventures depends on the hand holding the stick.

thinkingtoilet2• 1 year ago

I got into bitcoin around 2011ish for some time. I was never a True Believer but I was a 'soft believer'. At the time, when people asked me if Bitcoin is the future I would always say "I think it or something like it will be very useful". Fast forward 10 years and there's been no actual use of crypto. No killer app. No disrupting the finance world. It seems to be used exclusively by smart people as a means of extracting wealth from people who don't understand it.

AlienRobot• 1 year ago

Cryptocurrencies is one of those things that makes me embarrassed for the whole tech industry. I wish it was the only thing...

lifestyleguru2• 1 year ago

Fast forward 10 years and there's been no actual use of crypto. No killer app. No disrupting the finance world.

Just today I answered call on my mom's phone from unknown number. Regarding payout from blockchain investment account. Not the killer app and disruption we deserve, but the only one we got.

amrocha2• 1 year ago

The killer app is crime. Old scams have flourished. Entire new forms of scam have been invented. Crypto currency has been a game changer for criminal organizations.

OsrsNeedsf2P• 1 year ago

We built useful, legitimate services off crypto (think paying people out for doing work online). But the regulation became insurmountable.

I will admit however, almost everyone "interested" in crypto has never made a transaction.

yieldcrv9• 1 year ago

It seems to be used exclusively by smart people as a means of extracting wealth from people who don't understand it.

I'm all for an era of crypto feudalists

dylan6044• 1 year ago

It seems to be used exclusively by smart people as a means of extracting wealth from people who don't understand it.

How is that any different from other financial markets? A fool and his money are easily parted, while targeting desperate people with get rich quick schemes are also an easy play. The crypto/stocks/etc are just different tools to achieve the same result.

deadbabe3• 1 year ago

I’ve never see a “good” crypto millionaire/billionaire.

They’re always a smug racist/sexist/misogynist/ablist tech bro with fucked up visions of the future.

mhluongo4• 1 year ago

Hm, is that perhaps how you feel about all billionaires? Can you name one you think is "good"?

I've made some money in the space, have kids and a family, and care deeply about special needs and access (partner is a former SpEd teacher, I've volunteered and donate to related causes), and have invested heavily in reproductive rights. Does that make me "good"?

In my experience, and by my values, there are plenty of good and neutral people in the space. They aren't often the ones that ham it up for the media, but it should be obvious why that is.

shakow• 1 year ago

Isn't that tech billionaires in general?

mhluongo4• 1 year ago

This is so incredibly ill-informed it's hard to respond to. Thanksfully, it's incumbent on the person making the extraordinary claim...

currency exclusively used for doing crimes

... to provide extraordinary evidence.

On my end, my home is financed by a trust-minimized loan against my BTC, using a stablecoin. And I greatly prefer stablecoins to wires for paying international vendors.

onlyrealcuzzo2• 1 year ago

Obviously - if you are doing things that are legal - you have no need for Crypto.

Now, I think some crypto people will argue that there are many good and ethical things you could do which are illegal that you now can do with crypto.

However, all none of those things are happening. All that is happening is speculation and unethical crime.

corford• 1 year ago

The only obvious mainstream "success" to come out of crypto is stable coins (Tether/Bitfinex is something like the 5th or 6th largest buyer of US treasuries ...and amusingly keeps all the yield from them). Ironically, this use case also happens to be one that doesn't really require a decentralised ledger (would work equally well with a few cross-border validators, ala DNS root server approach) and lends itself very well to tradfi involvement (since you need pegging to fiat).

For me crypto today looks like ~1998/~2000 ish internet. Big, powerful traditional entities have fully woken up to it and will now take it over and ensure whatever useful use cases exist will be controlled by them with profits also accruing to them. The speculative, lawless days of the crypto wild west (fuelled by oceans of QE & stimmy money); and promises of a satoshi enabled future are well and truly over.

In terms of ushering in a new decentralised monetary order, it has failed completely.

horacemorace• 1 year ago

If cryptocurrencies are self-regulating, aren’t the techniques used by these hackers actually the best and most effective way to play the game by its own rules? Calling this behavior “cheating” smells of sore-loserism.

acc_297• 1 year ago

There is a certain Bitcoin evangelist who will preach the gospel of a self governing currency that via a system of rules will automatically validate transactions between trust-less parties in a decentralized manner over a globe-spanning internet protocol but then complain when that same system does not prevent them from accidentally sending the entire contents of their "wallet" to an address in North Korea.

The system does not represent ownership the system only tracks of the validity of transactions and if the North Korean government proposes a valid transaction of your BTC or ETH to an address they control and a mining-node includes that transaction in a block which a majority of the network accepts then those assets are no longer yours they belong to North Korea.

The properties of the crypto-asset ecosystem which allow it to be ungoverned also make it ungovernable.

earnesti2• 1 year ago

I would imagine exchanges these days routinely monitor incoming and outgoing transactions, and if they suspect the funds are stolen, they are freezed. I would imagine North Korea doesn't have really an easy job laundering that BTC they have stolen.

metalliqaz• 1 year ago

It appears crypto is just speed-running the last few hundred years on their way to modern financial regulation

rchaud5• 1 year ago

These are but pricey bug bounties. This will lead to a more efficient and secure cryptocurrency market, as participants will insist on better financial controls, threatening to flee to the regulated fiat markets if their needs are not met. /s

yieldcrv9• 1 year ago

These are but pricey bug bounties.

This isn't sarcasm to me, but the rest of your comment is.

strangattractor2• 1 year ago

"The shocking theft at WazirX, India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange..."

Oddly I am not in the least bit shocked. Now if we found out that this was an inside job I would again not be the least bit shocked.

blakesterz• 1 year ago

Apparently the title of this story changed at The WSJ. That word "Cheat" seems wrong, while the old title makes more sense.

  "How Hackers Stole Billions in Crypto to Keep North Korea’s Regime Afloat"

The archive link from the @Bostonian comment below has the original I guess: https://archive.is/1vkXG

dang• 1 year ago

OK, we've put that in the title above. Thanks!

ForHackernews2• 1 year ago

Kim Jong Un's keys: Kim Jong Un's coins.

Blockchain is a perfect, transparent trustless global ledger that can't be hacked, so it's a misnomer to characterise these transactions as "cheating", "crimes" or "theft".

cvoss4• 1 year ago

If you unlawfully or immorally gain access to information, such as my private keys, and then use that information to move money, you have absolutely committed a crime, cheated, and/or stolen from me.

If you deceive me into executing a transaction voluntarily by misrepresenting the destination (which is immoral and often illegal), you have absolutely committed a crime, cheated, and/or stolen from me.

cmurf• 1 year ago

Don't crypto advocates claim it needs nothing at all from government?

What's the basis of unlawful? What contract is controlling these concepts and their adjudication?

dwater• 1 year ago

What laws are a North Korean subject to that they have broken? Who decides when a transaction was cheating or stealing without a central authority and enforcer?

tgv2• 1 year ago

To add to the other comments: do you really have a right to whatever it is that the bits unlocked by that key represent? Who granted you that? AFAICT, it's the systems running the blockchain that grants you that, and it's not governed by any contract outside the blockchain.

rchaud5• 1 year ago

What NK hackers are alleged to have done here is fraud, something that the US head of state has been convicted of, by courts in his own country. NK on the other hand, has not been tried nor convicted.

What possible legitimacy does the US even have to mark others as "thieves"?

ForHackernews2• 1 year ago

I'm sorry, on the Blockchain we don't recognize legacy concepts like dead-tree nation state laws or ancient superstitions purporting to define morality. The future is all about registering ownership information in digital ledgers.

If you wanted to retain control of your keys, you should have encoded them in a secure, nonfungible image of monkey on the Ethereum Blockchain. That way, everyone would know those keys belonged to you.

1970-01-01• 1 year ago

transparent trustless global ledger that can't be hacked

51% attack says it isn't

benrutter2• 1 year ago

Tangential recommendation, but anyone interested in North Korean hacking should check our the BBC World Service's Lazarus Heist podcast[0].

0. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloads

bdavbdav• 1 year ago

The book is great too.

rsanek2• 1 year ago

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58959520-the-lazarus-hei...

benrutter2• 1 year ago

Oooh, this is going straight onto my reading list, thanks!

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

What we were promised: Crypto currencies would liberate journalists and dissidents

What we got: pedos, terrorists, and hostile countries got rich

onlyrealcuzzo2• 1 year ago

In fairness, NK is not rich - perhaps slightly less poor...

seanw444• 1 year ago

So... the same balance of good and evil present in literally every technology?

os2warpman• 1 year ago

Cheated?

From an outsider's perspective their methods seem typical.

TheBlight• 1 year ago

Super skeptical of all hacking attribution claims made by MSM.

MyOutfitIsVague• 1 year ago

Who is MSM?

pasquinelli• 1 year ago

[M]ain[S]tream [M]edia

stepupmakeup• 1 year ago

I've been skeptical ever since they were trying to claim the xz backdoor was from a state actor. All it took was 3 sockpuppet accounts, a lot of time and actual code contributions, something literally anybody with a computer science degree can do. Name: Jia Tan? Must be a CCP agent, never mind the fact that anybody can make their name and timezones anything...

chasing2• 1 year ago

I thought this was one of crypto's primary use cases? A kind of "anything goes, anything you can get away with is allowed" sort of approach.

IncreasePosts2• 1 year ago

Sure, in the same way that a primary use case of cash is that somebody can punch you in the face and take your money and whatever you can get away with is allowed.

chasing2• 1 year ago

The primary use of cash is to buy goods and services. That's not the primary use of crypto. The primary use of crypto, as far as I can tell, is to try to make money appear out of thin air whether via speculation or fraud. And, admittedly, to occasionally buy JPGs.

rchaud5• 1 year ago

Hackers then send the ether to “mixers”—crypto platforms that co-mingle tokens from various users, obscuring their ownership. After that, the ether is swapped for bitcoin and then converted into tether, a token whose value is linked to the U.S. dollar.

Good timing for the US to lift sanctions on Tornado Cash [0].

Too many people think "lock them up" is the solution to crime, without considering that crime relies on certain types of infrastructure to remain in business. And that people who are "tough on crime" often have good reasons to keep operational the things that facilitate said crimes.

[0] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0057

yieldcrv9• 1 year ago

adding sanctions to a smart contract address that cannot appeal itself was not a winning position in the US courts

and determing that a smart contract deployment was a "foreign asset" was also not a winning position in the US courts, as its not clear if it was deployed on a node outside of the US to begin with, or if the person that actually sent the deployment transaction was a non-US citizen

The Treasury with its new head just short circuited that challenge and stopped wasting taxpayer money on this

yeah, stick with prosecuting the actual crime instead of the laziest approach of calling everyone a criminal for using a sanctioned smart contract

NelsonMinar• 1 year ago

North Korea launders its stolen cryptocurrency through every available means. Including Tornado Cash, quite aggressively, which is why they were sanctioned. It is very hard to understand why the Trump administration would reverse those sanctions unless they are trying to aid this kind of money laundering.

mhluongo4• 1 year ago

Because code had never been sanctioned before, and it's a clear freedom of speech issue?

IncreasePosts2• 1 year ago

It's pretty incredible that a sizable percentage of North Korea's GDP derives from crypto theft. Actually about the same percentage as Spain was pulling from the Americas at the end of the colonial period.

benlivengood• 1 year ago

Satoshi identified!

rsanek2• 1 year ago

For others wondering, it's about 2%: 2023's GDP was $29.6b, and this article mentions that the $6b was "over a decade."

whatever1• 1 year ago

This is the only promise that cryptocurrency held. Avoid government barriers. So we should celebrate the fact that it was not a complete scam.

earnesti2• 1 year ago

It held also the promise of making me very, very rich.

dylan6044• 1 year ago

How'd that work out?

__MatrixMan__8• 1 year ago

I disagree. There's a tremendous amount of waste in the economy related to reconciling different companies' records of who owes what to whom and then getting that info to the bank and then hearing back from the bank about whether the debt was fully or partially paid and then relating that to whether the service continues to be rendered.

Moving from an accounts-receivable/accounts-payable model to a insert-coin-receive-service model would be a huge advantage.

It just hasn't happened because the vibes are wrong and it appears that they'll stay wrong for a while.

woleium• 1 year ago

i agree smart contracts are the way forward, but you don’t need crypto or blockchain to implement them. You do need a trusted third party, to adjudicate when things go wrong.

wyldfire• 1 year ago

It just hasn't happened because the vibes are wrong and it appears that they'll stay wrong for a while.

No. A civil society needs to be able to issue judgments that override transactions / seize assets. And therefore they cannot have automatons determining where the assets belong.

When criminals are caught with their hand in the cookie jar, we can't just shrug and say "gee I wish we had a way to get that money back."

I'm a big fan of bitcoin and to some extent cryptocurrency. I think it has real value. But I'm not deluded enough to think it can somehow replace all ledgers everywhere.

itsoktocry• 1 year ago

Moving from an accounts-receivable/accounts-payable model to a insert-coin-receive-service model would be a huge advantage.

Why would the method of payment affect how you track accounts payable/receivable in your books?

feoren4• 1 year ago

There's a tremendous amount of waste in the economy related to reconciling different companies' records of who owes what to whom and then getting that info to the bank and then hearing back from the bank about whether the debt was fully or partially paid and then relating that to whether the service continues to be rendered.

Is all that really a tremendous waste, in the days of databases and instant communication? How much waste are we talking about here? I'd wager a lot of money it's at least one order of magnitude less than the literal heat waste produced by validating bitcoin transactions. Crypto is much more wasteful.

Moving from an accounts-receivable/accounts-payable model to a insert-coin-receive-service model

The monetary system isn't what's preventing this. You can't provide a service and also charge for it in the exact same instant. If I hire a contractor to renovate my bathroom, there's a ton of negotiation, possible disagreements about whether the work is "done" or not, payment deadlines, etc., and crypto vs. fiat currency changes none of that.

ty68532• 1 year ago

And pretty unique online irreversible near instant transactions. For this reason it was often the cheapest way to buy bullion online in a way that cleared in less than an hour, since most banks charge for a wire and credit cards (or vendor risk departments) charge high vendor premiums on bullion transactions.

smallstepforman• 1 year ago

Extraordinary claims with no way to verify, typical for WSJ. Now the question is which group benefits from policies aimed to combat this? Follow the money to see who misleads you …

lern_too_spel3• 1 year ago

Who benefits from policies aimed to combat this? Western society.

logicchains• 1 year ago

Nobody in western society benefits from KYC laws, they make life hard for small business and destroy financial privacy while the big players get away with a slap on the wrist. There's absolutely zero empirical evidence of KYC leading to a reduction in the rate of any kind of crime.

bjornsing• 1 year ago

Before there was crypto North Korea stole 1000 Volvo cars from Sweden. They simply ordered them and never payed.

abidhusain• 1 year ago

The issue of cybersecurity in crypto is becoming more critical by the day. The scale at which nation-state actors are targeting the crypto world shows just how vulnerable many systems still are.

starwin1159• 1 year ago

Why are North Korean hackers so skilled? Are their technical skills top-tier?

micah94• 1 year ago

They work for a government that can help with the threats, bribery and social engineering required to get access to employees of exchanges.

OutOfHere• 1 year ago

Something tells me that WazirX's cold wallet wasn't actually cold - it was multisig but hot. The only thing that leaves the hardware running a cold wallet is a signed transaction that is limited in scope to the signed amount and recipient.

ForOldHack• 1 year ago

We should return the favor.

csense• 1 year ago

"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"

The original point of Bitcoin was that someone else didn't keep custody of your money for you. You'd keep custody of it yourself, on your computer or a paper wallet.

Yet, there are tons of people who keep obscene amounts of Bitcoins on crypto exchanges or otherwise held by companies for them.

Why do people buy a cryptocurrency built on distrust of institutions that hold your money for you, and then give that cryptocurrency to an institution to hold it for them?

Did nobody learn anything when the former Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange imploded in 2013-2014?

Hackers stole billions in crypto to keep North Korea’s regime afloat

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