The US Department of Justice announced on Thursday that it had seized cloud infrastructure used by North Korean hackers in a video call scam that stole more than $400 million in cryptocurrency over 18 months.
He also said he has court approval to seize or retain more than $1.2 billion recovered in the recent Binance hack.
What do we know?
The Federal Bureau of Investigation calls this scam “FaceStealer.”
According to the Justice Department, the hackers sent meeting invitations from accounts taken over from previous victims. Once a target joins, the hackers record their webcam video and play a pre-recorded clip of a previous victim that the target knows, so that trusted contacts appear to be present. The FBI says hackers are also starting to use AI-generated deepfakes of well-known cryptographic figures.
The hackers then stage a fake technical error and offer a link to “fix” it, which installs malware, the department said. In some cases, they waited months or even more than a year before stealing funds.
They then use the victim’s contacts to find new targets.
Who were the targets of the scam?
Most of the targets work in cryptography and other Internet-related fields, and hackers are increasingly going after open source software developers, apparently to enable supply chain attacks, the department said.
Under a federal warrant, the FBI seized more than 900 webcam videos from the victims.
“If you can’t imagine a scenario where you might fall prey to it, you’re not thinking creatively enough,” said Patrick Grandy, who heads the FBI’s Los Angeles field office.
The FBI links FaceStealer to a hacking cluster known as Sapphire Sleet or UNC1069. He is separate from the North Korean military hackers accused of the Binance theft.
What happened to Binance?
In the Binance case, the FBI said the group known as TraderTraitor stole more than $6 billion (€5.4 billion) on or around October 29. AP estimated this figure at around $6.3 billion (€5.7 billion) and called it the largest crypto theft on record. American agencies and private companies have since frozen more than $2.7 billion (2.44 billion euros), the ministry said.
Authorities typically file a forfeiture request with the court, after which a judge decides who has the right to claim the recovered funds, AP reported.
“The North Korean government is funding its rogue regime and illicit weapons program through the theft of cryptocurrencies,” said Mr. Scott Proctor, principal deputy assistant attorney general at the Department for National Security.
North Korea has denied any involvement in the Binance hack.
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