N.Korea may be behind new $100 mln cryptocurrency hack, experts say

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Source: Reuters, via Joe.My.God.

June 29, 2022
11:29 PM EDT
Last Updated 9 hours ago

N.Korea may be behind new $100 mln cryptocurrency hack, experts say

By Josh Smith

SEOUL, June 30 (Reuters) - North Korean hackers are most likely behind an attack last week that stole as much as $100 million in cryptocurrency from a U.S. company, three digital investigative firms have concluded.

The cryptoassets were stolen on June 23 from Horizon Bridge, a service operated by the Harmony blockchain that allows assets to be transferred to other blockchains.

Since then, activity by the hackers suggests they may be linked to North Korea, which experts say is among the most prolific cyber attackers. U.N. sanctions monitors says Pyongyang uses the stolen funds to support its nuclear and missile programmes.

The style of attack and high velocity of structured payments to a mixer - used to obscure the origin of funds - is similar to previous attacks that were attributed to North Korea-linked actors, Chainalysis, a blockchain firm working with Harmony to investigate the attack, said on Twitter on Tuesday. ... That conclusion was echoed by other investigators.

{snip}

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-may-be-behind-new-100-mln-cryptocurrency-hack-experts-say-2022-06-30/

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North Korea Likely Behind $100 Million Crypto Theft
June 30, 2022

https://www.joemygod.com/2022/06/north-korea-likely-behind-100-million-crypto-theft/

[viva la]

1. If banks had this level of hacks...

We'd all keep our money under our mattresses.

I thought blockchain was supposed to be more secure or something. I get a kick out of these libertarians suddenly calling for government regulation.

[reACTIONary]

4. +10 nt

[SouthernDem4ever]

2. that is their way around sanctions

just steal what you need.

[oldsoftie]

3. Crypto thefts aren't that rare, although this is a BIG one. And its probably GONE.

And what will happen if one day someone figures out the code for Bitcoin? A human invented it, why couldnt a human decipher it

[reACTIONary]

5. The encryption is based on the mathematical problem...

... of factoring the product of two large prime numbers. Folks have been trying to figure it out for decades, and no one has had any success. At least as far as is publicly known.

If it is ever figured out, it would probably be by a state intelligence institution, for instance, the NSA. If they did, or have, they would not do anything that would give it away. It would not be very useful if everyone knew they could do it.

If someone other than a state actor figured it out, and made it public, it would cause the collapse of a very large segment of the world's security infrastructure. Bitcoin would be the least of the problems that would cause.

[oldsoftie]

6. Well NOW I'm confused. How is the bitcoin code connected to anything else?

[reACTIONary]

7. It uses "public key" encryption to create the...

... "digital wallet" that you can use to send bitcoin to or from. With public key there are two keys, one is public and is given out to others, the other is private and is kept secret. The bitcoin wallet "address" that bitcoin is sent to is basically the public key.

When a message is encrypted with someone's public key, only the private key can decrypt it. Even the person who encrypted it and knows what is in it can't decrypt it. Because of this, the keys can be used to establish identity and ownership in the public ledger that records transactions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-key_cryptography

[oldsoftie]

9. So the hackers break your private key; like hacking your computer or bank acct

[reACTIONary]

10. No, they don't "break" the private key...

... which can only be done (as far as we know) using a brute force attack... Guessing over and over again. This is impractical because it take too long and is obvious as to what is happening. So that would be shut down.

One way is to STEAL the private key. That is hack into the computer where the keys are stored and copy them. This is what seemed to happen when the FBI recovered the bitcoin from the recent ransom wear attacks. They seem to have broken into one of the hackers servers and found the keys laying around.

In this recent incident, and several others, the hackers seem to be exploiting timing vulnerabilities in the protocols that are used to bridge from one type of "coin" to another. Or used to speed up transactions, which for bitcoin are slow. I haven't followed exactly how it was done, but I don't think it was done by cracking a key. I think it was more like tricking the system to point the fire hose of money their way. But I'm not sure.

[Deep State Witch]

11. Crypto Is A Ponzi Scheme

It's a high-tech Ponzi scheme. Honestly, I don't know who to root for in this case - the North Koreans, or the people that bought into crypto.