North Korean hackers used fake video calls in $400M crypto hack, says FBI

mmastrac an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I blogged about this earlier this year - I think they reached out to me as part of my crate work and tried to get me to download a booby-trapped repo with a remote shell.

Insidious attack, it felt very real, they had a compelling fake network of sites and companies

▲

bebopfunk an hour ago | parent [-]

Do you have a link? I’d be curious to read it

▲

jsploit an hour ago | parent [-]

https://grack.com/blog/2026/06/25/dissecting-a-failed-nation...

	▲	walrus01 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I think the lack of actual building suite/street address in the email signature in the very first email would have immediately made me extremely suspicious. That's about as good as "Totally real business address, trust me bro, Singapore". Also some kind of company main phone number in an email sig is a thing I'm expecting, even if it almost certainly goes to an IVR system, or the email sig doesn't have an extension number in it. But if a person is reaching out to me with a hand crafted email I'm also going to consider them a bit more suspiciously if there's no phone contact in the email sig. Further, .xyz or similar as a company domain name is pretty damn suspicious when, for example, luaventures.net isn't taken as a domain name. 99% of the time when I see .xyz it's spam/scam/phishing disposable domains. ---------------- edit: looks like the website still exists: https://www.luaventures.xyz/ (open in sandbox, do not download anything, caution, etc!) Googling luaventures.xyz turns up all sorts of weird things. The C2 IP mentioned in the writeup appears to be a /24 of some small hosting company in the UAE. inetnum: 89.124.107.0 - 89.124.107.255 netname: VDSINA country: NL geofeed: https://vdsina.com/geofeed_as216071.csv geoloc: 52.309711 4.935438 admin-c: SK15998-RIPE tech-c: SK15998-RIPE status: ASSIGNED PA mnt-by: servers-tech-mnt created: 2025-11-12T07:06:42Z last-modified: 2025-11-12T07:06:42Z source: RIPE role: SERVERS TECH FZCO address: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES address: Dubai address: 336469 address: Ifza Business Park DDP, Building 1, office number 36298-001 nic-hdl: SK15998-RIPE mnt-by: lir-ae-servers-tech-1-MNT created: 2023-10-25T09:55:18Z last-modified: 2024-07-10T12:05:37Z source: RIPE # Filtered % Information related to '89.124.107.0/24AS216071' route: 89.124.107.0/24 origin: AS216071 mnt-by: servers-tech-mnt created: 2025-11-12T07:08:49Z last-modified: 2025-11-12T07:08:49Z source: RIPE

▲

geekgod382 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Cryptocurrency theft is estimated to generate half of the country’s foreign currency income

▲

walrus01 37 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I really hope someone is able to obtain a screen-recording video of this as an example. I'd like to see just how good the 'fake' person on the other end really is... To date all the reports of this have been in written text form after the fact.

	▲	stronglikedan 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If it's as good as the AI videos in our security training, then the fake person was really good. On a related note, trying to get my parents to understand that they can no longer trust people in videos, even if it's me or my 8yo niece begging for ransom money, has been a real struggle.

▲

jmuguy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

"If you can't imagine a scenario where you might fall prey to it, you are not thinking creatively enough."

I dunno, maybe I'm being smug but I don't think I would fall for this.

	▲	apt-apt-apt-apt 12 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Thing with scams is 98% of them are obvious and dumb, but 2% hit your blind spot or vulnerability, and you end up owned.
	▲	xcf_seetan 21 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Well, i think you would need to be extremely creative to make me fall prey for this, as i do not do any video call at all, don't even have a cam or mic on my PC and, most important, don't have any crypto that could be stolen from me. :)

▲

jmyeet an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is a real "thoughts and prayers" type situation because I basically have zero sympathy for those affected by this. There's really no reason for crypto to exist. You're kind of on your own. I view reversible transactions and the like as a feature not a bug. Every one of these crypto thefts is the fruit of irreversible transactions that crypto advocates wanted.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Don't get me wrong: I love reading about the ingenuity involved in these hacks. Keep em coming. The Ledger chip hack was particularly impressive from a technical POV.

▲

mrb 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

"There's really no reason for crypto to exist"

There definitely are some reasons, precisely when reversibility works against you: eg. when bad authorities wrongly target you or censor you. Crytocurrencies give us payment networks that work even where traditional systems fail. No denied transactions. No limits. No "account" to open. Works for the underbanked. Send money truly anytime anywhere. No other system does this. That's the value.

It's absolutely possible that you personally have no reason to use crypto. But others don't have the same experience as you due to where they live, what political party they support, what they do, etc. There is a lot of censorship and oppression in the world.

▲

MOARDONGZPLZ an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You’ll get downvoted, but I’m totally with you. Very interesting write ups and lots of ingenuity in the hack, very/completely unsympathetic targets of the hack.

	▲	tgsovlerkhgsel 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The problem with this kind of thinking of "they deserve it because they engage in something I find wrong" is that almost everyone does at least one thing that one group or another considers "wrong" in some way: Eating meat, using AI, flying, taking cruise ships, driving a car, eating pork, drinking alcohol, smoking, being too tolerant or not tolerant enough towards someone or something, dressing wrong, working in the wrong industry, supporting the wrong political party, ...

▲

sandworm101 42 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Fools and there money, but I do not like the idea of North Korea illegally gathering money in any form. While I don't care whether cryptobros loose money, I don't want to see that money go to such a regime.