DPRK-linked hackers are responsible for $620 million theft, according to FBI.
The FBI has pinned a massive cryptocurrency heist targeting players of the game Axie Infinity on North Korea, announcing on Thursday that hackers tied to the country, including the Lazarus Group, were responsible.
“Through our investigation we were able to confirm Lazarus Group and APT38, cyber actors associated with the DPRK, are responsible for the theft of $620 million in Ethereum reported on March 29,” the agency declared in a statement released on Thursday. It did not explain how it had arrived at that conclusion.
The thieves stole $620 million in Axie Infinity crypto, a token based on the Ethereum blockchain and earned through playing the online game also called Axie Infinity. They were able to steal the funds through Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network, which lets users transfer their crypto in and out of the game.
According to Ronin Network, the hackers used private keys to create phony withdrawals. A similar mode of attack was used against blockchain platform Poly Network last year, when a hacker made off with $600 million in tokens. However, the perpetrator soon returned the money and was subsequently offered a job by the platform as a security adviser.
The US Treasury Department has sanctioned a cryptocurrency wallet linked to the Axie Infinity hack, adding the link to its list of Lazarus Group-related sanctions. The hacking group is believed to be responsible for the Sony Pictures hack in 2014 and the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017.
The Pentagon claimed in a 2020 report that North Korea’s cyber warfare corps includes 6,000 hackers who operate out of Belarus, China, India, Malaysia, and Russia. Pyongyang has denied the current allegations as well as previous accusations of hacking.
Theiving on a grand scale is legal. Free trade loving West just stole close to a trillion dollars from the Russian government and other russian riches who invested in the West by wyof sanctions. They also made it clear that the stolen wealth will not be returned even after the Ukraine conflict is over.
This is not the first time. The stolen wealth includes the surplus held by Iraq, Libya and many other middle Eastern countries. These countries also had huge gold reserves which ere also stolen.
When Afgan populatin starving, US confiscated their 7 billion dollars.
It is highly unlikely non-Western countries will trust Western banking systems and the lack of trust due to Western financial systems not following the financial contracts will lead to an alternative system. Bit coin, and other forms exist but they do not form a competing alternative.
China has to fear its huge US dollar reserve and also the Saudis. Economic theivery is instutionalised in the Western banking system. If you build a system that is not based on productivity and growth but based on arms manufacture, regime changes etc, it is unlilkely to last long.
South Koreans and Japanese are the economic colonies which will also fall when the Western theivery system falls. People in both South Korea and Japan work very long hours and almost become slavery to the system. Can they run this sort of work force on full force for years to come? I doubt it. The Hunger game does have an end.
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