The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (“DPRK” aka North Korea) is conducting highly tailored, difficult-to-detect social engineering campaigns against employees of decentralized finance (“DeFi”), cryptocurrency, and similar businesses to deploy malware and steal company cryptocurrency.
North Korean social engineering schemes are complex and elaborate, often compromising victims with sophisticated technical acumen. Given the scale and persistence of this malicious activity, even those well versed in cybersecurity practices can be vulnerable to North Korea’s determination to compromise networks connected to cryptocurrency assets. North Korean malicious cyber actors conducted research on a variety of targets connected to cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds (ETFs) over the last several months.
Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division
Related:
- Arkham Says $3.5B LuBian Bitcoin Theft Went Undetected for Nearly Five Years
August 2, 2025
A crypto wallet tied to a little-known Chinese mining pool may have been the victim of the largest bitcoin theft ever recorded, according to new findings from Arkham Intelligence. n an Aug. 2 thread on X, the onchain analytics firm said it had uncovered evidence that 127,426 BTC — worth $3.5 billion at the time — ...
- Luxembourg: Cybercriminals stole thousands from BIL customers using phishing scam
August 2, 2025
After cybercriminals stole thousands from BIL customers using a fake website, the banking association maintains that digital banking tools remain safe, but users must stay vigilant. In the wake of a sophisticated phishing scheme that led to major financial losses for dozens of BIL customers, The Luxembourg Banker’s Association (ABBL) is defending the security of the ...
- Ransomware attacks cripple government services across Dutch Caribbean islands
August 2, 2025
Several major government institutions across the Caribbean part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands were hit by cyberattacks last week, including a ransomware attack on Curaçao’s Tax and Customs Administration that temporarily disabled critical services, NOS reports. According to Curaçao’s Minister of Finance, ransomware was used in the attack on the tax authority. After the breach ...
- Arctic Wolf Observes July 2025 Uptick in Akira Ransomware Activity Targeting SonicWall SSL VPN
August 1, 2025
In late July 2025, Arctic Wolf observed an increase in ransomware activity targeting SonicWall firewall devices for initial access. In the intrusions reviewed, multiple pre-ransomware intrusions were observed within a short period of time, each involving VPN access through SonicWall SSL VPNs. While credential access through brute force, dictionary attacks, and credential stuffing have not yet ...
- Ransomware gangs are now expanding to physical threats in the real world
August 1, 2025
Ransomware gangs seem to be getting desperate when it comes to getting results, as besides encrypting and leaking data on the web, they’ve also started threatening CEOs with physical violence. Cybersecurity researchers Semperis claim over the past 12 months, in 40% of ransomware incidents, the CEOs of the affected company were also physically threatened – which ...
- Frozen in transit: Secret Blizzard’s AiTM campaign against diplomats
July 31, 2025
Microsoft Threat Intelligence has uncovered a cyberespionage campaign by the Russian state actor we track as Secret Blizzard that has been targeting embassies located in Moscow using an adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) position to deploy their custom ApolloShadow malware. ApolloShadow has the capability to install a trusted root certificate to trick devices into trusting malicious actor-controlled sites, enabling ...