Crypto world, hold on to your hat! North Korean hackers have pulled yet another rabbit out of their sleeves. Not only are they stealing money, they're also getting jobs in crypto companies.
A well-known crypto detective, ZachXBT, exposed something truly chilling.
North Korean computer experts are acting like ordinary workers. They infiltrate crypto projects to later siphon money from the inside. It's like your roommate turned out to be a thief!
In one example, these scam workers drained $1.3 million from a project. They bad-coded the stuff into the system and then began to churn the money around, in an effort to obscure its destination. Even Tornado Cash was enlisted, a crypto dirty money washing machine in their effort to clean the funds.
Not all, however.
According to ZachXBT, the hackers joined more than 25 crypto projects since June 2024. They're making a huge amount of money, up to $500,000 every month! That seems like it should be one big group in North Korea behind that.
This new trick is really smart. See, these days what hackers do is create fake names and backgrounds to get hired by a project. They even convince the projects that they are from some other country, mostly US or Malaysia. The really worrying thing is the duration. According to ZachXBT, this has been happening since July 2023 and lasted all the way up to July 2024, during which period around $5.5 million was transferred to these hackers.
That's a lot of money stolen!
So what can crypto projects do to keep themselves safe?
According to ZachXBT, they need to be harder on whom they hire. They need to really investigate work histories and watch for overly perfect resumes. It's a lot of detective work while bringing in new people into the team.
This is not the first time that hackers from North Korea have caused trouble within the crypto world. As per a report, they are known to have a group, Lazarus, which has reportedly stolen over $3 billion in crypto in 2017-2023. That's more than what some countries make in a year!
The US government warned of this very issue. It said more and more North Korean workers were pursuing tech jobs, especially in crypto. A type of hidden invasion of the digital world happening. The whole situation reflects how tricky the crypto world can be. Technology isn't the issue here, it's trust. Who would you simply trust while hiring for your project? How does one know if the guy standing in front of you seeking a job is who he says he is?