Foreign hacker who stole $1.18 million in crypto assets extradited to Korea

[Yamane_Keto]

The malware employed a so-called “memory hacking” technique, automatically replacing cryptocurrency wallet addresses with the hacker’s own during transactions conducted on infected computers.

Clipboard hijacking can be performed on user-level permissions. hacker only needs to wait until run the affected application, and any address copied will be replaced with the attacker's address. Windows activation tool attacks typically target a wider range of applications, as they can empty your wallet simply by opening it and gain access to everything you can do. This means you could lose much more than just an address replacement.

[Cricktor]

Is activating via PowerShell also dangerous, even though the computer is essentially just for gaming?

It depends. Do you understand what this Powershell script did to your gaming computer?

Let's look at the extremes.

A) The script doesn't contain anything nasty. You're good. Do we know this? Not likely.

B) The script hid some malware on your gaming computer which can load more sophisticated malware which potentially could infect other devices in your local network. The malware infection could therefore potentially reach a device where you operate your crypto wallets with. You don't do your crypto stuff on your gaming device, do you? I hope not.

Your gaming computer likely needs to be online, so do most of your other devices in your local network. If you don't isolate your gaming computer from your other local network devices the malware could potentially spread as outlined above.

Is it likely that you have the network equipment to securely isolate your gaming device in a separate VLAN? I don't think so (educated guess).

Can your accounts that you use on your gaming device be compromised. Yeah, could be, if it got infected. Do you use any of your more important email accounts on that gaming device? If yes, it's getting worse if the gaming computer is potentially infected.

Can you know if it's clean or not. Not very likely!

[SmartGold01]

The malware employed a so-called “memory hacking” technique, automatically replacing cryptocurrency wallet addresses with the hacker’s own during transactions conducted on infected computers.

Clipboard hijacking can be performed on user-level permissions. hacker only needs to wait until run the affected application, and any address copied will be replaced with the attacker's address. Windows activation tool attacks typically target a wider range of applications, as they can empty your wallet simply by opening it and gain access to everything you can do. This means you could lose much more than just an address replacement.

Of course there are people are just too careless about their security and when a proper concern is put you could be that preventive, some people do love free things because if the proper attention is not given to such things there could be another way to gain them back. For instance there is a popular network provider at my country being MTN, when a bonus is being given to you there could be another way to earn it back on other to secure back what they had already spent on users. Meaning to every first call you makes would be charged 3x or 6x to equate to what they had already spent.

[sokani]

You think someone would spend time and resources on something that you're supposed to pay for and let you have it for free? No way. Nothing is free, there's always a catch. What happened to these persons should serve as a lesson to others who like freebies. Spending a few dollars to purchase Windows activation keys or other softwares they need  won't kill and would save them from crisis.