North Korea’s timing was inconsiderate; I’m in the middle of an election night guide to crypto and AI super PAC spending (subscribe to get it before Tuesday!).
But I wrote up a primer on the Binance hack, answering questions I’ve gotten about North Korea: https://www.citationneeded.news/its-always-north-korea/
Citation Needed is independent and reader-supported.
Coming next: which races to watch on election night, after crypto and AI’s $240 million blitz. Where they’re spending on battlegrounds vs. safe seats, and what their ads were actually about (spoiler: rarely crypto or AI).
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io I'm very curious how these other companies justify these bailouts on paper? Do they have some mutual support agreement? Is it a loan? Is it ad-hoc? Are they actually all the same company in 1000 trenchcoats?
I actually had the thought "oh no, Molly's deep in crypto U.S. election funding shenanigans right now, but we need her reporting on the Binance story!".
Okay, I might be getting a bit too parasocial with a newsletter/ podcast. Gonna reel it back in. 😄 But seriously, thanks.
@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io
Ooo.
Send your nearest NK embassy a letter of complaint about it! See if they respond. Just for the lulz.
Or, maybe not wanna get on intelligible agencies' radars like that?
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@molly0xfff@hachyderm.io Hey Molly, great stuff as usual. If you have time at some point, i have another question.
”Few attackers are sophisticated enough to pull off an attack of this scale”. Why? Why does North Korea, of all, have the best hackers in the world?? I would never have guessed. If they can do it, i would have thought there’d be a million hackergroups that could too…
Regarding opsec: That "hacker" hoodie isn't a genuine one from the DPRK merch store. Wearing cheap knockoffs at work exposes you to severe security risks.
How do we know it’s North Korea? Few attackers can pull off thefts this big, and DPRK hackers have a signature in how they fund attacker wallets, make test transactions, and launder funds.
Tether and Circle froze $2.4B+ which they can burn and reissue to Binance. Binance says another ~$600M was frozen by other protocols; that may be harder to get back. Binance’s losses will likely exceed what North Korea walks away with. (More on the hack itself, from last night: https://www.citationneeded.news/binance-theft/)
To cash out, the DPRK runs funds through mixers and bridges, then no-KYC exchanges, money mules, escrow services, platforms like Huione, banks and platforms in less-regulated jurisdictions, and OTC brokers. Sometimes they skip cashing out; they’ve used stablecoins directly for military procurement.
What’s it for? Under heavy UN sanctions, crypto theft has become a major source of revenue for North Korea. US officials also claimed in 2023 that about half of the country’s ballistic missile program was funded by cybercrime.
#crypto #cryptocurrency #binance #NorthKorea #DPRK