BTCPay placed bounty on wrongdoers

[NotATether]

So has the bitcoin been recovered despite the bounty? At least let the money be recovered before recommending it to another company.

It is just over for Coldcard.

This has nothing to do with Coldcard. This is related to a separate vulnerability which has allowed attackers to access macaroons in the LND lightning nodes of BTCPay server merchants, and drain them.

https://blog.btcpayserver.org/security-advisory-btcpay-server-2-4-2/

[RGBTC]

But even if they did offer a bounty, and the funds were returned... they will still have victims pissed at them, due to how long (and extremly difficult more than anything else) the process of returning funds would be.

What I never understood in these 'reclaim' cases is, if this ends up in a Canadian court law suit will the rest of the World be able to claim their return or Canadians only?

What I know, any regional court will return the losses recovered to those entitled to their decisions, not limited to a victim basis, including the value of losses for each victim who can be identified and the service appointed for the subsequent restitution process (usually a service that allows serving global users). But yeah, you know it takes even years.

The restitution flow is worth reading https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/when-stolen-crypto-is-recovered-who-is-entitled-restitution-2024-12-09

[Oshosondy]

Bybit hack was state sponsored hacking, it's going to be a lot harder to trace than any hacking caused by non state sponsored individual and the chance for the hacker to return the money is higher. I hope this company can recover the money.

What if it is done by people in North Korea? Some of you will say that online activities are monitored or not accessible to people of North Korea, but hackers are smart.

There are also hundreds or thousands of hacks which are about cryptocurrencies and nothing was done after the coins have been compromised by the hackers. It is not only about North Korea.

[Z-tight]

So ColdCard was just some junior running the hardware wallet game? no wonder this happened, i am still surprised why many people are using this less popular hardware wallet, or are they just very good at marketing? my friend said he could remember some youtubers telling their followers to buy ColdCard wallet, i guess they did it for referral money......

In any market, there would be bigger brands with higher revenue than others. For example, with centralized exchanges, Binance, Coinbase and Bybit are probably bigger than most of the other exchanges, but it does not necessarily make the others unsafe, it has to approached on a case-by-case basis.

Before now, Coldcard didn't have such a terrible reputation in the community. The only concern was in 2021, when they stopped being a free and open source software, and would you believe that was also the same year this critical firmware bug was introduced into their devices.

[Somegory]

Let me pretend to be an hacker for a second, what will stop me from attacking a company using North Korea tools or something that's going to show that I am from North Korea to these people?

If it's North Korea everyone will easily walk away, isn't it? No one will go after them because that's a country that has failed to come opened to the world, it's like they don't exists.

What I am trying to say is not all these attacks are from North Korea attackers, some are intentionally blamed on the North, a CEO of a crypto company can even put the blame of North Korea to avoid losing face.or something else.

[KiaKia]

I can't say that you are wrong and there are many youths in America that are currently hackers who are responsible for stealing people's bitcoin even from big companies, I'm sure that some people are already seeing it online.

There are females and males in America living lavishly with money they stole, bitcoins to be honest, Zach posted something similar to this on his X account two days ago.

A teenage girl is responsible for some high numbers of Bitcoin stolen from them in a very deceitful way and then proceed to calling the victims and harassing them on phone like nothing would happen.

North Korea? Maybe, but there is a chance that this is also not the case.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Unfortunately, we are in an era where even hackers are controlled by governments; not all of them, of course, but some are. I say this because last year, in the Bybit case, where hackers stole US$1.4 billion in ETH, the FBI accused hackers working for North Korea.

In the DMM Bitcoin exchange case, which happened in 2024 and hackers stole US$308 million in Bitcoin, investigations revealed it was a North Korean hacker group. The KuCoin case, where US$281 million in cryptocurrencies were stolen, also points to North Korean hackers, as can be seen in this article:

https://crystalintelligence.com/investigations/the-10-biggest-crypto-hacks-in-history/

I'm posting this to say the following: even if a billion-dollar reward is offered for finding those responsible for this misfortune affecting so many people, it might still not be possible to punish the culprits. Because if they are North Korean hackers...

no other government will catch them in North Korea, and I highly doubt that North Korean hackers would act without orders from the North Korean government. They would probably quickly send everything they stole to the Korean government if they are Korean hackers behind this crime.

They are doing bad activities under command of North Korean government but it's understandable that in a nation with dictator like Kim Jong Un, if you don't do what he want, he will kill you, even your family. Perhaps not all people in Lazarus group are bad people or actually want to do such hacks but they have to do that for their individual safety and their family safety.

Rightly, what they do are not things to be proud of and I believe they only can stop doing that if they leave North Korea, but let's consider how?

With money they hacked, no governments in other nations can get it back and anytime hacked money from Lazarus are used in any mixers, big problems will come with that mixers.

The only prevention mixers or no KYC exchanges can do is filtering and blacklisting funds from Lazarus but there are always chances for mistakes.

[Faisal2202]

I'm posting this to say the following: even if a billion-dollar reward is offered for finding those responsible for this misfortune affecting so many people, it might still not be possible to punish the culprits. Because if they are North Korean hackers...

no other government will catch them in North Korea, and I highly doubt that North Korean hackers would act without orders from the North Korean government. They would probably quickly send everything they stole to the Korean government if they are Korean hackers behind this crime.

To be honest, I still doubt that NK has any hackers. I think other countries are using it as a cover-up story, but NK also doesn't seem to retaliate against this agenda that aggressively, which hints maybe they are doing it all. I have read almost all the hacking events in which Lazarus and Kimsuky were involved. These are said to be their best hacking groups, but how do US authorities and everyone say NK is behind these hacks?

How can they say something like this without solid proof? If they can't prove this, then why are we buying this whole agenda?

I doubt it, but I have seen enough that suggests they are behind it, like their people have been caught working in different companies, their dialect and their voice, and working patterns were related to NK. So that's how the authorities have said they are behind all this, but they are not working alone.

[Jaycoinz]

What I am trying to say is not all these attacks are from North Korea attackers, some are intentionally blamed on the North. A CEO of a crypto company can even put the blame on North Korea to avoid losing face. Or something else.

Not the CEO of a crypto company because he isn't the one doing the investigations into the stolen funds, but the incompetence of the investigation bodies that handle such cases, although I understand the involvement of the CEO, but every final message put out there would be tailored to the center on the fact that there is already an existing body known for such crimes and with North Korea hackers at the front picture, it becomes one of those cases where the CEO and investigate bodies can appear free.