North Korea Aggressively Targeting Crypto Industry with Well-Disguised Social Engineering Attacks


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


Sign up for our Newsletter


Related:

  • Netgear Smart Switches Open to Complete Takeover

    September 7, 2021

    Three severe Netgear vulnerabilities, codenamed Demon’s Cries, Draconian Fear and Seventh Inferno by the researcher that found them, affect 20 of the company’s managed smart switches and could allow an attacker to take them over. The bugs were patched on Friday with zero technical details made available, but the researcher has now released more details on ...

  • REvil ransomware group resurfaces after brief hiatus

    September 7, 2021

    The operators behind the REvil ransomware group have resurfaced after allegedly closing shop following the widespread attack on Kaseya that caused thousands of victims on July 4. Security researchers said all of the dark web sites for the prolific ransomware group — including the payment site, the group’s public site, the ‘helpdesk’ chat and their negotiation ...

  • TrickBot gang developer arrested when trying to leave Korea

    September 6, 2021

    An alleged Russian developer for the notorious TrickBot malware gang was arrested in South Korea after attempting to leave the country. The TrickBot cybercrime group is responsible for a variety of sophisticated malware targeting Windows and Linux devices to gain access to victim’s networks, steal data, and deploy other malware, such as ransomware. Seoul’s KBS (via The ...

  • East Asian online organised crime group preying on British job seekers

    September 6, 2021

    An organised group of criminals based in East Asia have defrauded job seekers in the UK and worldwide after getting a scam app on to both the Google and Apple app stores. Working with victims who have tried to track down their scammers, Sky News has learnt they were operating from Cambodia, the Philippines and China, ...

  • Norwegian student tracks Bluetooth headset wearers by wardriving around Oslo on a bicycle

    September 4, 2021

    A Norwegian student who went wardriving around Oslo on a pushbike has discovered that several popular models of Bluetooth headphones don’t implement MAC address randomisation – meaning they can be used to track their wearers. Norwegian state broadcaster NRK revealed Bjorn Hegnes’ findings after helping him analyse Bluetooth emissions from a dozen different models of audio ...

  • Analyzing SSL/TLS Certificates Used by Malware

    September 3, 2021

    Malware has increasingly been making use of encryption to help hide their network traffic in recent years. This makes sense especially when one realizes that ordinary network traffic is increasingly encrypted as well. Google’s own Transparency Report notes that HTTPS traffic now makes up the vast majority of network traffic passed via the Google Chrome ...