Tag Archive for: “Funded

North Korea’s missile program partly funded by crypto heists


According to various news outlets, North Korean hackers have been responsible for stealing billions of dollars in cryptocurrency over the years. These funds have allegedly been funneled into developing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) ballistic missile program. The DPRK has trained hackers to impersonate employees and tech workers to exploit security vulnerabilities and walk away with $3 billion in cryptocurrency.

How North Korean hackers dupe people

According to The Wall Street Journal, an engineer working for a blockchain gaming company was contacted by a recruiter via LinkedIn. He was under the impression that he was offered a higher-paying job. However, the engineer unknowingly fell into a trap by North Korean hackers. They forwarded a document disguised as part of the interview process, which turned out to be a malicious code that granted the hackers access to his computer leading to the eventual theft of $600 million in crypto.

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“Funded hacktivism” or cyber-terrorists, AmEx attackers have big bankroll

The “cyber-fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam” took American Express down for two hours yesterday afternoon.

On March 28, American Express’ website went offline for at least two hours during a distributed denial of service attack. A group calling itself “the cyber-fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam” claimed responsibility for the attack, which began at about 3:00pm Eastern Time.

In a statement, an American Express spokesperson said, “Our site experienced a distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack for about two hours on Thursday afternoon…We experienced intermittent slowing on our website that would have disrupted customers’ ability to access their account information. We had a plan in place to defend against a potential attack and have taken steps to minimize ongoing customer impact.”

The American Express DDoS is part of a new wave of attacks started two weeks ago by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam group, which launched a larger campaign targeting US financial institutions that began last September. The group’s alleged goal is to force the take-down of an offensive YouTube video—or extract an ongoing price from American banks as long as the video stays up, which could be indefinitely.

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Ars Technica » Technology Lab