Justice Department Disrupts North Korean Cryptocurrency Theft Operations, Seizes Over $1.2 Billion
The Department of Justice has announced coordinated actions to disrupt North Korea's government-backed schemes to fund its regime through massive cryptocurrency theft. These actions include the seizure of cloud-based infrastructure used in the 'FaceStealer' social engineering scheme, which has resulted in the theft of over $400 million in cryptocurrency. Additionally, the Justice Department has obtained court authorization to seize and restrain more than $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency recently stolen from Binance, a virtual currency exchange. North Korean hackers, known by various names including Sapphire Sleet and APT38, employ sophisticated tactics such as luring targets into video meetings using stolen accounts, recording webcams, and playing prerecorded videos of trusted contacts to gain trust. They also utilize 'super intelligence' (SI) to create deepfake videos of influential individuals in the cryptocurrency and web3 industries to enhance the effectiveness of their schemes. These hackers then ...
