North Korean Hackers Have Crypto In Their Crosshairs
According to a new book by Geoff White, “The Lazarus Heist,” the regime’s hackers have been become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade, managing to steal an estimated $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency to date. Crypto investors should expect the gang to continue exploiting blockchain targets, or the “the soft underbelly of the financial system,” according to White, who believes the $2 billion figure is a “vast underestimate.”
It stands to reason the hacker group would target crypto networks: Lazarus’s modus operandi for years has been to generate as much cash as it could to help prop up the North Korean regime and its nuclear weapons program. In the past decade, its schemes have included sophisticated ATM hacks and ransomware, including the infamous WannaCry cyber attack.
Now decentralized finance, or DeFi, has become a more lucrative target than banks, thanks to the billions of dollars locked up in its various applications. But the move-fast-and-break-things culture still prevalent in web3 development hasn’t helped the security of those networks. Neither does the fact that building web3 apps is unusually hard for programmers, who can create gaping financial vulnerabilities with simple coding errors.
Across the board, the amount of money lost through hacks of DeFi projects more than doubled in 2021, with security website CrytpoSec listing 102 reported breaches between Jan. 2020 and June 2022, totaling $3.4 billion lost.
Lazarus has gone after several crypto networks, including a Slovakian crypto exchange in 2020 from which it stole virtual currency worth $5.4 million. The hackers went on to…