[2017-10-02] Police Confirm North Korean Connection in Bitcoin Exchange Phishing

[gokayc]

Law enforcement officials have confirmed that hackers from North Korea sought to steal bitcoins from exchanges in South Korea.

In a report released last week, the Republic of Korea's National Police Agency (NPA) said the incidents – which were said to be ultimately unsuccessful – did occur. It further detailed that 25 employees at four different exchanges were targeted in 10 separate "spear phishing" attempts since July.

Spear phishing is when a would-be hacker pretends to be someone else in order to trick the victim into providing login or other details.

The confirmation comes several weeks after cybersecurity firm FireEye published a report on the attacks.

AFP, citing regional news source Yonhap, reported that those behind the attacks pretended to be security specialists and sent emails with malware included as attachments. The police report further indicated that the hacking attempts also targeted smartphones, suggesting that they may have been attempting to compromise devices used for two-factor authentication.

Perhaps most notably, the NPA indicated that none of the investigated attempts resulted in either the loss of funds or an actual security breach, according to AFP. No exchanges were identified in the report.

The Permanent Mission to the United Nations of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea did not respond to a request for comment.

https://www.coindesk.com/police-confirm-north-korean-connection-bitcoin-exchange-phishing/?utm_content=buffer6c63c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

[bassong]

I am not surprised that Kim is a thief too, even though he owns a country. I read somewhere, someone using this case as a good example for why bitcoin should be regulated. Stupid article, like north korea and isis does not use fiat?

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/28/north-korean-hackers-attempts-to-steal-bitcoin-are-a-huge-wake-up-call-commentary.html

[Baofeng]

I think this just proved that North Korea is hell bent to sabotage and stole funds from their neighbors. We all know that they have been at odds every since WW2 and this is one way for North Koreans to weaken their enemy but attempting to stole money from them. This is just the start of cyber war and for sure this is not the last. Good thing is nothing has been stolen. And for sure the South Koreans has already learn their lesson and will upgrade their security around their exchanges.