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- 1 North Korean hackers were attempting to breach engineers’ macOS per Elastic Security Labs.
- 2 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) noted that major attacks on crypto casinos were carried out by the Lazarus Group.
- 3 Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge and Harmony’s Horizon Bridge were two well-known hacks in 2022 that were linked to Lazarus.
Lazarus group, a North Korean group of hackers, has been targeting blockchain engineers involved in cryptocurrency exchange platforms with a new macOS malware called ‘Kandykorn’.
Elastic Security Labs reported that North Korean hackers were attempting to breach the engineers’ macOS. The hackers are distributing a Python-based application pretending to be a crypto arbitrage bot via direct messages on Discord servers.
The hackers are trying their best to lure the engineers to download and decompress a ZIP archive containing malware in the form of an arbitrage bot. The efforts made to breach the systems is to steal a significant amount of cryptocurrencies from the engineers.
Earlier this year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) noted that major attacks on crypto casinos were carried out by the Lazarus Group. The loss faced by the victim firm was $40 Million in crypto on September 4, 2023.
What Does the Elliptic Report Say?
Elliptic, a blockchain security firm noted in its report dated September 15, 2023 that in the past 104 days, Lazrus group stole $240 Million in cryptocurrencies through major hacks including Atomic Wallet, CoinsPaid, Alphapo and Stake(dot)com.
It noted that mostly, crypto mixers were used by hackers to temper the origin and destination of stolen funds.
Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge and Harmony’s Horizon Bridge are two infamous hacks of 2022 that were linked to Lazarus. Both hacks happened in the early half of the year. Up until June of this year, Lazarus was not publicly linked to any significant cryptocurrency heist.
The cryptocurrency payment company CoinsPaid’s firewall was breached by hackers, who took $37.3 Million in assets. The hacker tracked and examined CoinsPaid’s systems for six months, attempting a variety of tactics including phishing, social engineering, and brute force to gain access.
Such hacks slow the growth of the industry by negatively affecting adoption. All countries with significant adoption of cryptocurrencies need to step up their efforts to develop strong and fair legal frameworks for cryptocurrency adoption in order to establish its legitimacy.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions stated by the author or any people named in this article are for informational ideas only and do not establish financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading crypto or stock comes with a risk of financial loss.
With a background in journalism, Ritika Sharma has worked with many reputed media firms focusing on general news such as politics and crime. She joined The Coin Republic as a reporter for crypto, and found a great passion for cryptocurrency, Web3, NFTs and other digital assets. She spends a lot of time researching and delving deeper into these concepts around the clock, and is a strong advocate for women in STEM.
