[HN Gopher] Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks t...
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Lazarus Group laundered $200M from 25 crypto hacks to fiat
Author : noch
Score : 260 points
Date : 2024-09-15 01:09 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (zachxbt.mirror.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (zachxbt.mirror.xyz)
| talldayo wrote:
| I'd imagine it's pretty easy, too. You've already got the assets
| in a poorly-accountable and liquid state - now all you need is a
| chump to unload the bag on. Almost makes you wonder how many
| cryptocurrency influencers are in the pocket of sanctioned
| nations...
| echelon wrote:
| > makes you wonder how many cryptocurrency influencers are in
| the pocket of sanctioned nations
|
| That's a wild thought that hadn't occurred to me.
|
| With increased KYC and tamp down, where does this money go
| next?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| In much the same way the internet interprets censorship as
| damage and routes around it, financial networks consider lost
| opportunity due to regulation as damage and route around it.
|
| People will assume I mean buying drugs, but actually, I mean:
|
| - when I had $10k in my US bank account but couldn't access
| it while traveling because I ran afoul of whatever KYC at
| Western Union after losing my bank card; or,
|
| - today, when I couldn't prepay for OpenAI platform credits
| because I have the "wrong kind" of bank account for them.
|
| Society views the fascistic impulses of those in control
| stifling innovation and growth as damage -- and will
| perennially route around them to get the system flourishing
| again.
| beeflet wrote:
| >In much the same way the internet interprets censorship as
| damage and routes around it
|
| I think this is an outdated meme that has not proven very
| true. I won't go into a full rant unless you want, but long
| story short the architecture of the internet has turned out
| to be more fragile than expected.
|
| >Society views the fascistic impulses of those in control
| stifling innovation and growth as damage
|
| Maybe not society as a whole, but certainly sub-societies
| do, so yes. In this case, Lazarus group is a sub-society
| that is parasitic to society at large.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| What do you mean?
|
| The internet has successfully resisted multiple
| government-sponsored PSYOPs and allowed the formation of
| a revolution to fix society from its current trend
| towards fascism, unifying the liberation movement across
| continents -- which I would argue is working far beyond
| expectations.
|
| (Ed: I'd genuinely like to hear the rant, even as a
| tangent.)
|
| > Maybe not society as a whole, but certainly sub-
| societies do, so yes.
|
| All of society does.
|
| Which is why regulation (and oppression) needs to be
| focused to be effective: if you want to suppress Lazarus
| group you can't catch too many strays or you build up
| enough societal counter-pressure your regulation is
| subverted.
| tw04 wrote:
| > when I had $10k in my US bank account but couldn't access
| it while traveling because I ran afoul of whatever KYC at
| Western Union after losing my bank card; or,
|
| Why would you first stop be western Union if you lost your
| bank card? Ignoring my confusion as to why you didn't have
| a credit card handy, or a phone with a banking app handy if
| you're well off enough to have $10k in the bank. Why would
| your first thought be going to western union, a well known
| haven for scammers everywhere. OF COURSE it set off all
| sorts of red flags with your bank. I'd be more concerned if
| they didn't put up roadblocks to someone claiming to be
| you, in another country, trying to pull out large sums of
| money at a western union.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| How do those things help?
|
| I had both a credit card and a phone; you can't get cash
| with NFC. I was stuck using credit card services and cut
| off from most of the economy of the primarily cash-based
| society I was visiting. To the extent merchants accepted
| digital payments, it was primarily in their local banking
| app.
|
| > OF COURSE it set off all sorts of red flags with your
| bank.
|
| Do you not understand why I regard me standing at a WU
| branch with my passport in hand and access to my
| authenticator app on my phone, but unable to actually use
| the service regardless, as a frustrating experience?
|
| Roadblocks would have been fine: there was no road at
| all, no matter how many checkpoints I was willing to
| satisfy.
|
| From the same bank who happily allows online transactions
| to drain my account in obvious patterns of fraud from
| well-known fraudsters (eg, chat.versailles) without a
| single roadblock -- so they can harvest fees.
| n_ary wrote:
| No ATMs nearby? Usually unless you are in some severely
| impoverished nation, ATMs should allow to withdraw(with
| some hefty fees sometimes) some local currency.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| ATMs and banks (cash advances) supported cards and cards
| with chips, but not NFC.
|
| My physical cards were lost together -- which admittedly
| was dumb, but losing your wallet while still having your
| passport and phone/Apple Wallet shouldn't result in
| "frozen out of banking".
| immibis wrote:
| OpenAI isn't the government - yet.
| lottin wrote:
| > Society views the fascistic impulses of those in control
| stifling innovation and growth as damage
|
| You think society sees financial regulations as fascistic
| impulses that stifle innovation? Where do you get that
| from?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I didn't say that in what you quoted.
|
| > Society views the 1:[fascistic impulses] of those in
| control 2:[stifling innovation and growth] as damage
|
| I say that people who run our societies are fascists --
| and their impulses for control [1] then cause a stifling
| of innovation and growth [2]. Which a five minute
| conversation with someone that does business will
| convince you of better than I will.
|
| However, you got cause and effect reversed in your
| reading: I said that fascists are stifling innovation
| with regulation, not that regulations are fascistic.
|
| I also carefully said lost opportunity -- because
| regulations become routed around precisely when they
| introduce more cost than benefit. Eg, some regulations
| _boost_ opportunity by creating stable business
| environments.
| sanp wrote:
| And how many VCs heavily invested in Crypto startups?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| And if any of them even realize it.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > I'd imagine it's pretty easy, too. You've already got the
| assets in a poorly-accountable and liquid state
|
| Alright, so walk me through it because I don't see how it's
| easier to wash than other ill-gained funds like cash.
|
| You robbed someone and now you sit on $200M worth of Bitcoin.
| How you unload them so you have cash you can use, when every
| transaction is traceable and any exchange willing to trade for
| those amounts do KYC and follows AML?
| conception wrote:
| You run the bitcoin through mixers/online exchanges into
| monero/zerocoin and then to wherever to get out with fiat.
| artdigital wrote:
| you still have to do the actual laundering at some point.
| just because you have $200 million now in monero (which you
| also need to get to first) doesn't mean you can just
| transfer them to your bank account. exchanges will KYC you
| for that, and you will definitely get flagged for a source
| of wealth / source of funds check to prove where you got it
| from
| vernon99 wrote:
| For $200m yes, but you'd be really stupid trying to do it
| all at once. Small amounts, multiple accounts, gradually
| over time.
| bitcoinmoney wrote:
| It's really easy. Use casinos in 3rd world countries to
| certify your money as gambling winnings. There must be
| underground network for this. So it looks like you're
| gambling and you got lucky. Very dangerous though. I
| heard that they charge 13% total fee. You come in at 5M$.
| You play for 1 week.. Leave with 160M or something. Bring
| that cash into the bank and deposit it.
| Loughla wrote:
| How to turn monero or Bitcoin into cash, I think is the
| hardest part.
|
| Laundering it after that is, in fact, easier.
|
| But the first problem still isn't solved with your
| statement I think.
| snypox wrote:
| Aren't you supposed to show proofs of winning 160m when
| depositing into a bank? Even for just a few millions?
| immibis wrote:
| And a shady third world casino will happily provide that
| proof document in return for a 13% cut of your winnings.
| snypox wrote:
| I still think you'd get under an investigation (at least
| from the tax authorities, but I can imagine police too)
| after years of years consistently depositing millions of
| wins in your bank account.
| n_ary wrote:
| I do not think shady people put their loot in bank. Most
| illicit activities and tax avoiding folks rely heavily on
| cash or other expensive exchangeable
| goods(rolex/jewellery/gems/gold bars/gold watches etc).
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's easier because mainstream cryptocurrency services
| support money laundering for privacy reasons, and will
| happily process withdrawals from known money laundering
| services like Tornado Cash until OFAC orders them to stop.
| Even if you trust that they're doing an honest inquiry into
| the source of large amounts - and I do not - they can't
| _know_ that an arbitrary mixer output didn 't come from
| casino winnings or Ethereum mining in the early days.
| wmf wrote:
| _any exchange willing to trade for those amounts do KYC and
| follows AML_
|
| This is not true AFAIK and it used to really be not true.
| There were plenty of no-KYC exchanges or exchanges that
| offered no-KYC accounts if you had the right connections.
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > This is not true AFAIK
|
| Tell me one big exchange that'll accept a deposit of $200M
| USD worth of cryptocurrency without asking questions.
|
| > exchanges that offered no-KYC accounts if you had the
| right connections
|
| Yeah, and plenty of taxmen that will let you wash money if
| you pay them X amount, but lets try to stick to verifiable
| facts instead of imagining/assuming a bunch of things.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| with clean funds launch a new token and create a liquidity
| pool on uniswap
|
| with another set of clean funds in a second address you buy
| that token in the liquidity pool
|
| with the dirty funds in the third address you also buy the
| token and dont stop buying, you use all the dirty funds
|
| the second address sells, and you just are another lucky
| crypto trader with another 10,000% gain, indistinguishable
| from any other crypto that's mooned that much. You, along
| with all the bots and copy traders and momentum buyers. Just
| sell into liquidity, withdraw the more liquid crypto on
| exchanges. Pay taxes.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| If you do this, the dirty funds need to connect to a
| different RPC server than your clean funds
|
| dont use infura or a node in a data center on the same IP
| address
|
| if youre not using your own node on your own network, you
| need to mask your IP address and think about who knows it.
| Tor works better than VPN for this
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| If you think modern chain analysis can't look through those
| simple schemes, I'm happy the ecosystem seems more naive
| than I thought :)
|
| Oh well, easier for criminals to get caught I suppose, so
| not much harm done.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| All the indictments I've seen involve basically zero
| OPSEC while all the others go unindicted
|
| Its not about the chain analysis, its about proof. Any
| random charting site will raise flags about the token
| buyers, but can the prosecutor use that? The cases arent
| being brought
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > any exchange willing to trade for those amounts do KYC and
| follows AML?
|
| Binance paid U.S. regulators a $4.3 billion for violating
| U.S. anti-money laundering laws a year ago. There are many
| crypto exchanges that have poor KYC or deliberately do it in
| a way that can be circumvented - Bitzlato was one example. I
| imagine if you have some dirty Bitcoin you can find an
| exchange today running in a non extraditable jurisdiction
| that will trade it for cash for cut.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/co-founder-seized-
| crypto-...
| kotaKat wrote:
| That's what the influx of shitty NFTs and "tokens" and "chains"
| are that keep coming up in Twitter ads these days. Criminals
| just building shitty bags to rip off dumb people while they
| launder away the profit underneath it.
| paulpauper wrote:
| many of these services do not exist anymore (chip mixer) or
| increased security (sanctions on Tornado cash, more KYC, better
| chain analysis).
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| KYC
|
| Know Your Customer, for anyone else unfamiliar with the
| acronym.
| FabHK wrote:
| And:
|
| ABC - Anti Bribery & Corruption
|
| AML - Anti Money Laundering
|
| CTF - Counter Terrorism Financing
|
| FATF - Financial Action Task Force
| consumerx wrote:
| KYCing should be illegal.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| You're going to have to try make a case for that one.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Because "Know your customer" is the government creating a
| plausible deniability shield for discriminating against a
| person or group of people.
|
| It should be the government's job to prosecute criminals
| by proving they commit crimes, which allow the accused to
| defend themselves in court, which hopefully results in
| less corruption.
|
| With KYC, the intent is to not allow the accused a chance
| of defending themselves. It is a way to deny people
| rights without the costly hassle of going to court.
| manquer wrote:
| Is there evidence of discrimination ? Are banks rejecting
| services because of age/race/gender/ethnicity etc ?
|
| KYC to reject basis legality of the source seems an
| acceptable tradeoff to live in a civilized society?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Age/race/gender/ethnicity and other legally defined
| protected classes are not the only possible instances of
| discrimination. An example is a person sending money to
| family in a country where there is less rule of law and
| they get suspected of terrorism (regardless of firm
| evidence), or someone selling sex services that gets
| dropped because a bank does not want to deal with them.
| Or it could just be errors in the programs and people
| flagging accounts and transactions.
|
| Electronic money transfer is a vital function of modern
| life. It should be a constitutionally protected,
| inalienable right, even for anyone convicted of crimes,
| just like criminals are still housed and fed.
| shrubble wrote:
| Note that this has nothing to do with the FreePascal/Lazarus
| project...
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Doesn't have anything to do with the guy in the bible either.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| This is impressive analysis, but have I overlooked the laundering
| part? Money laundering is providing an explanation about why it
| is clean, not hiding the reason that it might be dirty.
| wmf wrote:
| Most of the crypto world operates on "assumed clean"
| (blacklist) thinking so you don't have to fully clean anything.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| and when the crypto passes through a government's address it
| magically becomes clean :))
|
| so the whole blacklist concept is dumb because the same funds
| have to be reset, but the old chains of transactions are
| still being passed around as if its a "gotcha" but theyre
| really irrelevant quickly and reintegrated back into the
| economy quickly
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't see what's dumb about it. It seems like
| blacklisting is the digital equivalent of "I don't want to
| do business with criminals" - I wouldn't knowingly buy
| anything from a thief, or from a store that knows some of
| its suppliers are thieves. If law enforcement has seized
| the property and auctioned it, then the criminals aren't
| profiting, so I don't mind.
| usrusr wrote:
| If you don't want to do business with criminals, don't
| buy crime futures. Because that's essentially what crypto
| are (unless not held and only purchased on demand for
| whatever oddball transaction you'd want to do that's
| neither speculation nor directly related to crime):
| demand outside of pure speculation (which is certainly by
| far the biggest part) must be completely dominated by
| demand for paying ransoms, purchasing illegal substances
| and so on.
|
| Even if "your" tokens are perfectly clean, straight from
| an artisanal miner running their rig purely on solar
| surplus or something like that, their _value_ still
| derives almost exclusively from crime use cases, hidden
| behind no matter how many layers of zero-sum speculation.
| night862 wrote:
| That is totally absurd.
| dist-epoch wrote:
| > demand outside of pure speculation (which is certainly
| by far the biggest part)
|
| > their value still derives almost exclusively from crime
| use cases
|
| you contradict your self in your own post
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > business with criminals, don't buy crime futures
|
| Is your Crime same as my Crime?
|
| Suppose I am a software developer living in Russia and I
| don't want to pay taxes to a government that commits war
| crimes, is that a crime? Should a western bank be
| preventing that?
|
| Suppose you were protesting in a dictatorship, and as a
| result your assets were seized, you have a criminal
| record, maybe you are collecting donations, should I as a
| western bank act to stop that 'crime'?
|
| Even simpler if you want to buy some weed, it's a crime
| in country A but not in country B. Suppose so live in
| Country B, should I be concerned?
| acdha wrote:
| > Suppose I am a software developer living in Russia and
| I don't want to pay taxes to a government that commits
| war crimes, is that a crime? Should a western bank be
| preventing that?
|
| Yes, because that activity cannot be distinguished from
| thd Russian government evading financial sanctions. It
| sucks for the innocent party but there are many victims
| of their government with more serious grievances.
|
| > Suppose you were protesting in a dictatorship, and as a
| result your assets were seized, you have a criminal
| record, maybe you are collecting donations, should I as a
| western bank act to stop that 'crime'?
|
| This has the same problem plus the gross negligence of
| advising anyone living under a repressive government to
| use a financial system designed to leave an immutable
| trail for the police to use when prosecuting them and
| everyone they know. The full retroactive deanonymization
| is incredibly dangerous for dissidents since it allows
| the authorities to prosecute them for transactions they
| made even before they were suspected of anything.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Yes, because that activity cannot be distinguished from
| thd Russian government evading financial sanctions.
|
| I am not sure this is true, but regardless I was going
| for a moral angle - the question was basically: Suppose a
| western bank was 100% certain that it was not Russian
| government avoiding sanctions, would that still apply?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| The point is that when a government seizes crypto funds
| and auctions them off again, the funds are clean for
| legal purposes but transaction history doesn't change, it
| just has an additional transaction.
|
| Software that flags aspects of transaction is nullified
| by the reality that it doesn't actually know that one
| subsequent transaction cleaned the whole trail. There are
| hundreds of thousands of governments around the world
| when factoring in municipal authorities, even governments
| you don't respect are cleaning funds in the eyes of
| governments you do respect. In the eyes of the
| requirements of exchanges that have these automated chain
| analysis practices. Right now, only a handful of
| governments do crypto investigations and seizures, but as
| this increases it only moves towards the nullifying chain
| analysis, as many funds will be comingled with a flagged
| transaction but unknown to the software about how these
| funds have been washed by a nation state's blessings.
| phyalow wrote:
| To be fair so does most of the traditional banking system.
| delusional wrote:
| This was the case maybe 20 years ago, but modern anti money
| laundering has moved the needle significantly in recent
| years. Where I live there are now rather strict limits on
| what consumers can do without subjugating themselves to
| what's called "Due-diligence". Which is in fact about NOT
| assuming cleanliness. Know You Customer is all about not
| blindly assuming your counterparty is honest.
| jorvi wrote:
| Yup. This also why people should only use fintech banks
| (Revolut, N26, Bunq, etc) as a checking account and
| should keep the bulk of their money elsewhere.
|
| Because of the relatively low-friction signup process,
| fintech banks are extremely trigger happy with account
| locks, and at that point you have to go through their
| permanently-overloaded customer service to get your money
| transferred to another bank, a process that might take
| months if you're unlucky.
| manquer wrote:
| Also don't keep money that that you cannot afford to miss
| in fintech because they are not banks at all.
|
| The FDIC insured bank which actually has money when using
| these apps is somewhere in the backend and you get stuff
| like the synapse bankruptcy[1]
|
| [1] https://apnews.com/article/synapse-evolve-bank-
| fintech-accou...
| calpaterson wrote:
| The financial system runs on a soft-whitelist system with
| extra checking and a shadow banning system.
|
| This is why everyone is always asking everyone to
| demonstrate the sources of funds in finance.
|
| Obviously it is not 100% effective, but it is somewhat
| effective. You cannot just jog in from Iran and enroll as a
| JP Morgan client
| CaptainOfCoit wrote:
| > soft-whitelist system
|
| A whitelist/allowlist is a system that defaults to
| rejecting everything, but allow someone to override that
| rejection.
|
| A blacklist/denylist is a system that defaults to
| allowing everything, but can on-demand block/deny
| something.
|
| Banking system for individuals today mostly have a
| blacklist/denylist for the common use case. Walk into a
| bank and ask to open an account, and they'll most likely
| allow you.
|
| If you manage to trip up any alerts (big deposits for
| example), they'll ask you for more info, citing KYC/AML
| for the reason why.
|
| > This is why everyone is always asking everyone to
| demonstrate the sources of funds in finance.
|
| This usually happen after the funds have touched some
| account you own, hence it's a blacklist system. A
| whitelist system wouldn't allow you to deposit those
| funds until after you got verified somehow.
| walterbell wrote:
| US/Canada 2024, $3 billion in fines by US regulators,
| https://rupakghose.substack.com/p/td-banks-aml-issues-and-fi...
|
| _> DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to
| launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl
| sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers._
|
| Canada 2018, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33918115
|
| _> An estimated $5.3 billion of laundered money into B.C. real
| estate in 2018 hiked housing prices 5 per cent, two special
| reports released Thursday by the provincial government show._
|
| Australia 2015, https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/06/stop-
| money-launderi...
|
| _> Credit Suisse estimates some $28 billion of Chinese money has
| been invested in the Australian housing market over the past six
| years_
| mulmen wrote:
| Is there any reason to believe the Australian investment is
| related to money laundering or drug sales?
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| No. The linked article admits they're wildly guessing and
| links to another report with recommendations but no numbers I
| saw from a skim. I hear this repeated regularly on HN but am
| yet to see a reliable source beyond "but it's Chinese money".
| shakna wrote:
| The FATF report goes into it in more detail [0], but to put
| it very simply - Australia doesn't have the protections it
| should, when it comes to money laundering.
|
| [0] https://www.fatf-gafi.org/content/dam/fatf-
| gafi/mer/Mutual-E...
| phyalow wrote:
| In my empirical experience, its more to do with stashing the
| proceeds of state capture by politically connected
| individuals in China.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Another reason why we should only allow Canadian nationals to
| own real estate in Canada.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| What about shell companies? Corporations are people too!
| yunohn wrote:
| Governments will never remove that - it's a super important
| construct to allow everyone except the average citizens to
| avoid all sorts of taxes.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Thats an easy fix: Only Canadian shell companies can own
| real estate in Canada! =)
| pjkundert wrote:
| Or, you know... build more houses.
|
| We could drop _western Europe_ into central BC / Alberta/
| Sask. / Manitoba _and not notice_.
|
| Or, we could destroy our small builders, import millions of
| immigrants incapable of construction / trade work, inflate
| asset prices, pay for their housing with government grants,
| lie about CPI inflation, and fix it all if we just...
|
| "only allow Canadian nationals to own real estate"?
| endgame wrote:
| > Australia
|
| Don't worry, Australia's going to fix that! By making "harming
| public confidence in the banking system or financial markets"
| "serious harm" under the upcoming Communications Legislation
| Amendment (Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill
| 2024.
|
| And by "fix", I mean "suppress discussion about", of course.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| There's no shortage of things to complain about regarding the
| U.S., but its First Amendment is pretty great IMHO.
| tryauuum wrote:
| I wanted to comment that any country has something about
| freedom of speech in their constitution, the problem is
| usually that the government doesn't respect its own law.
|
| But when I went to compare american and russian
| constitutions and if you only judge the text, the us is
| worded better. In russian it's simply "freedom of speech is
| guaranteed to anyone" while in the us it's more specific
| about not creating new laws harming freedom of speech.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> not creating new laws harming freedom of speech_
|
| Tests are helpful, when writing rules. US freedom of
| speech has been influenced by law on asymmetry of
| economic resources in groups vs. individuals [2010],
| allowing state propaganda in domestic media [2012], and
| gov-corp coordination of social media moderation [2024].
|
| [2010]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_(orga
| nization) [2012]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80
| %93Mundt_Act
| [2024]https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-
| with-biden-...
| amy-petrik-214 wrote:
| It was once said by a famous african dictator:
|
| "There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee
| freedom after speech."
|
| -- Forest Whitaker
|
| So maybe it is like this. It's a funny thing to say,
| because in this mindset there is freedom literally to do
| anything. Consequences come after, minutes, hours, days,
| years, but after and not before, at least not until
| OpenAI-Google's new "PrescientCrimeCAItcher" comes
| online.
|
| These "community guidelines" are quite frustrating
| because a major communication modality presently does not
| have freedom of speech, it has removal of speech it does
| not like. So that's an interesting loophole legalese-
| wise. Presently these are private sector companies
| running addicting entertaining boards from which they
| serve ads for profit. If these are instead made to be
| "utilities" like power or water, utilities of
| communication, I would imagine the calculus would change
| loceng wrote:
| Can't have malinformation that may make the so-called King(s)
| look bad..
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > DoJ investigation found.. [banking] business had been used to
| launder more than $650m between 2016 and 2021 from US fentanyl
| sales for Chinese crime groups and drug traffickers.
|
| According to the official CIA "world factbook" or whatever that
| is called: an estimated 3% to 5% of the world's _fucking entire
| GDP_ is linked to criminal activities.
|
| Blockchains are cool in that they allow to follow the
| laundering (so it allows for nice blog entries with good
| looking graphs, which I do appreciate), as opposed to
| traditional banks where it's all opaque.
|
| But the amount of money laundered using cryptocurrencies is a
| drop in the bucket compared to size of criminal activities
| ongoing in the world (btw criminal activities predates
| blockchain by centuries or millenia).
|
| And don't get me started on the missing billions when "aid" is
| sent to this and that country. Be it Ukraine or Haiti or
| whatever: there are corrupt officials and individuals at every
| single step of the ladder.
|
| My favorite is the US loading a 747 with 12 billions in bills
| of $100 USD to "help the reconstruction of Iraq" and officially
| 9 billions of those 12 billions have been "lost".
|
| Yup. Lost. That's official stuff.
|
| So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 _billion_ in
| $100 USD bills: cry me a river.
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Do you have a source for 'My favorite is the US loading a 747
| with 12 billions in bills of $100 USD to "help the
| reconstruction of Iraq" and officially 9 billions of those 12
| billions have been "lost".'
|
| Your numbers seem a bit off, but it is definitely an
| outrageous incident.
|
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2011-jun-13-la-fg-
| mi...
|
| "This month, the Pentagon and the Iraqi government are
| finally closing the books on the program that handled all
| those Benjamins. But despite years of audits and
| investigations, U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what
| happened to $6.6 billion in cash -- enough to run the Los
| Angeles Unified School District or the Chicago Public Schools
| for a year, among many other things."
| csomar wrote:
| > So the $200m of the Lazarus group, compared to $9 billion
| in $100 USD bills: cry me a river.
|
| I don't think the US cares about a $200m, whatever that $200m
| belong to. Their issue is that this money is enabling a
| regime they want to see inert (since the nuclear shield means
| that the DPRK is not going anywhere anytime soon).
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I always assumed that bitcoin was propped up by purchases
| from money laundering - so that the total value of bitcoins
| more or less equalled the 3-5% of global GDP that is illegal
| / laundered etc.
|
| Once upon a time when I looked at it the numbers seemed to
| stack up - everyone and their dog just used crypto as one
| stage in the laundering cycle is the assumption
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Why would you do that? Unless your I'll gotten gains are
| natively already crypto (bitcoin ransomware) adding crypto
| to the process just makes it way more difficult and
| traceable. Massive financial machines well integrated into
| the world banking and political structures already launders
| money just fine on its own in truely massive quantities.
| loceng wrote:
| BOOK TO READ: Wilful Blindness: How a network of narcos,
| tycoons and CCP agents infiltrated the West by Sam Cooper - an
| investigative Canadian journalist, to get a deep dive into how
| long this has been going on.
|
| This current government in power [9 years now; the Trudeau
| Liberal-NDP majority voting power coalition] has done nothing
| but to allow rampant fraud including this to continue; Trudeau
| himself on video has stated he admires China's basic
| dictatorship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8FuHuUhNZ0
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The problem with "money laundering" is that its theory and its
| operation are the inverse of one another.
|
| The theory is supposed to be that you make it illegal to
| conceal the source of money that is the proceeds of a crime, so
| you can prosecute criminals for money laundering even if you
| couldn't prove the original crime. Which, to begin with, is
| pretty sus. Basically an attempt to end run around the
| government satisfying its burden of proof for the underlying
| crime.
|
| But that also doesn't work. The criminals just set up a
| legitimate business as a front, claim the money came from there
| and the only way to prove otherwise is to uncover the original
| crime. So in practice money laundering is overwhelmingly
| charged in one of two cases.
|
| One, they already proved the original crime and tack on a money
| laundering charge which is pointlessly redundant because those
| criminals were already caught. Two, you get some innocent
| people who -- unlike career criminals -- don't understand how
| money laundering laws work, so even though they were doing
| nothing wrong, they do something which is technically money
| laundering (because the rules criminalize innocuous and common
| behavior), or trigger the false positive AI nonsense, and then
| get charged with money laundering or booted out of the banking
| system.
|
| Meanwhile large criminal organizations know how to make their
| transactions look like innocent transactions and then the
| government yells at banks for not catching them, even though
| the banks have no real way to do that because the criminal
| organizations made their transactions look like innocent
| transactions.
|
| This is a dumb law that does more harm than good. Just get rid
| of it and charge the criminals with their actual crimes.
| smashah wrote:
| This is probably related to Kim Jong Un's new Maybach GLS
| qingcharles wrote:
| I had to look that up.. damn, right in their faces:
|
| https://www.nknews.org/2024/08/kim-jong-un-flaunts-new-200k-...
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| How hope ZachXBT gets paid well for all his effort in catching
| scammers. Not sure how he eearns.
| w_TF wrote:
| he has been paid pretty handsomely from various grants and
| individuals
| pton_xd wrote:
| Our own banks commit 10x more fraud than that. See TD Bank money
| laundering case ongoing, could reach $4 billion in fines. Wells
| Fargo $3 billion in fines for fraudulent charges on fake
| accounts. JPMorgan Chase $1 bil settlement for UST and precious
| metal futures fraud.
|
| And those are just the ones I can remember from the last few
| years.
| greesil wrote:
| What about
| hanniabu wrote:
| Sad to see this getting downvoted. HNers hate to admit this
| because then they can't paint crypto has a technology enabling
| fraud.
| manquer wrote:
| Our banks don't work with Iranians or North Koreans , with
| crypto it is also about who not how much
| pjkundert wrote:
| "don't work with ..."
|
| You seem strangely certain of that.
|
| It is unlikely that you should be.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally
| cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be to
| do? Could we just knock out a few cables?
|
| North Korea pretty much only uses the Internet for scams Or to
| make money in violation of sanctions. They certainly don't allow
| their citizens to use it for anything else, and they don't allow
| their citizens to leave the country because they would never come
| back.
|
| Even if it were only temporary, suddenly cutting off the Internet
| to the country would expose all of those remote workers to the
| people who employ them and don't realize they are employing North
| Koreans when they all disappear at once.
|
| Is this just not logistically feasible? or are we just too afraid
| it would be unpalatable to our allies? I can't be the first
| person who has thought of this.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Most of North Korea's traffic is routed through China so it'd
| require cutting the latter off from the internet. With the
| amount of submarine cables connecting China to other countries,
| it wouldn't be very feasible.
| w-ll wrote:
| You think they are doing this from NK ip blocks/asn? Their
| physical links are more or less enemy of enemy with US, so they
| have no incentive to block. Its impossible to keep them off the
| internet.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Oh I'm not imagine anyone helping us. Im wondering why we
| aren't cutting undersea cables or drone bombing land based
| ones.
|
| All the "international sovereignty" responses are humorous to
| anyone whose paid attention to the last twenty years of the
| American military.
| brap wrote:
| Because China really wouldn't like it, and that's all there
| is to it.
|
| Is it technically feasible? Yes.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > drone bombing land based ones
|
| How do you imagine that a drone will be able to find and
| damage an underground cable?
|
| This is not Afghanistan, a drone will not live long past
| China's/Russia's air defences.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I imagine pretty easily. They likely don't have to find
| it, nothing gets dug in North Korea without US watching
| it via satellite. Chinas air defenses likely don't exist
| in North Korea.
|
| I have no doubt the US has plans to cut them (and
| probably anyone else you can imagine) off in the event of
| war.
| gosub100 wrote:
| It's probably of higher intelligence value to let them
| connect and intercept everything than it is to cut them off
| and not know what's going on. If you look at their border
| with China, it's only tens of meters from fairly populated
| areas, so setting up high bandwidth microwave links
| wouldn't be hard. Also bombing a sovereign nation is an act
| of war and comes with consequences.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| First consider that the internet was designed to withstand and
| endure attacks upon it. So long as at least one connection
| remains, the nodes thereof remain accessible.
|
| Next, consider that the authority of US sovereignty ends at US
| borders. The US legally cannot unilaterally do anything to
| anything outside of its own borders.
|
| Next, consider that both North Korea and more importantly China
| have no damns to give about what the US wants.
|
| Next, consider the first point again. Any actions made
| domestically can and likely will be circumvented by people who
| do not agree with them. An obvious example is people running
| their own DNS servers configured in defiance of US government
| orders.
|
| So to answer your question:
|
| Is it legally feasible? No.
|
| Is it politically feasible? No.
|
| Is it logistically feasible? No.
|
| Is it physically feasible? No.
|
| Is it good that this isn't feasible? Yes.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > First consider that the internet was designed to withstand
| and endure attacks upon it. So long as at least one
| connection remains, the nodes thereof remain accessible.
|
| Tell me you haven't worked in network infrastructure without
| telling me you haven't worked in network infrastructure.
|
| > Next, consider that the authority of US sovereignty ends at
| US borders. The US legally cannot unilaterally do anything to
| anything outside of its own borders.
|
| I mean, sure, officially, when all laws are followed and in a
| friction-less plane this is correct. However the United
| States does all kinds of shit unilaterally outside it's own
| borders, literally all the time, not the least of which every
| war we've been in post WWII, and incalculable numbers of
| other tom-fuckery carried out on all levels of secrecy and
| non-secrecy by all manner of organizations identified by
| three letters, most commonly the CIA.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Tell me you haven't worked in network infrastructure
| without telling me you haven't worked in network
| infrastructure.
|
| Am I wrong, though?
|
| >I mean, sure, officially, when all laws are followed and
| in a friction-less plane this is correct. However the
| United States does all kinds of shit unilaterally outside
| it's own borders, literally all the time,
|
| You can just say we went and blew up Nordstream, you know.
| jen729w wrote:
| > Am I wrong, though?
|
| Yeah. Congestion makes a single-node Internet unusable.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Yeah we've been drone bombing other countries, even ones
| we're not at war at, for 20 years. If most Americans Google
| which countries we have troops in they'll be shocked to
| find we're invading countries they don't know about.
|
| There are some good reasons people have given here why we
| aren't doing it, as I suspected, but I'm sure borders
| aren't on the list.
| appendix-rock wrote:
| Only an American would ever entertain this idea without being
| at least a bit tongue in cheek about it. The US doesn't own the
| Internet.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Out of interest I looked up who controls the DNS root
| servers:
|
| Europe (2): RIPE and Netnod AB. RIPE is Europe's RIR, run as
| a conference by European ISPs. Netnod is a Swedish ISP.
|
| Asia (1): Project WIDE, part of the Tokyo Institute of
| Technology.
|
| US (9): Verisign, Cogent, NASA, US Department of Defense, US
| Army, the University of Maryland, ISC (as in the Bind9
| people), ICANN itself, and the University of Southern
| California.
|
| The last two seem to have some overlap and there is probably
| a lot of overlap between all of these organisations.
|
| Verisign runs two root servers which is why the list has
| twelve entries but the root servers run from A to M.
| a_dabbler wrote:
| DNS != The internet. You can still use the internet without
| access to the DNS root servers
| seydor wrote:
| You could also run the internet on smoke signals but
| nobody does it
| a_dabbler wrote:
| If you think losing DNS root servers means that NK would
| have to use smoke signals then I think you don't
| understand how the internet works frankly. If you blocked
| your own computers access to the DNS root servers right
| now you probably wouldn't even notice the difference
| jnordwick wrote:
| smoke signals is a non-standard extension. however over
| avian carrier has its own rfc and is entirely legit:
|
| https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2549.html
| c0balt wrote:
| +1, One cab likely also presume that especially DNS at
| the root level is already handled locally for NK. They
| reportedly have their own intranet so presumably they
| also have common services like DNS hosted their.
| factormeta wrote:
| just edit /etc/hosts or run your own bind, and point dns
| to 127.0.0.1, no DNS root server needed!
| qingcharles wrote:
| It would be very easy to run without DNS. Just have someone
| bring a decent sized chunk of the world's DNS entries into
| the country in a diplomatic pouch every month.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The US owns the world, the same way any big empire does.
| Exersice of soft power when it works, and violently explosive
| power when it doesn't. Power flows from the barrel of a gun,
| not from who owns some DNS servers.
| hash9 wrote:
| When was the last time they used that "explosive power" to
| good effect? They got humiliated in Afghanistan and Russia
| isn't even scared to act out any more. The only people who
| think America still rules the world is it's delusional
| populace.
| bn-l wrote:
| Both conflicts were about punishment and troop training,
| and they achieved that. If they wanted to they could have
| razed every square km with conventional weapons alone.
| churchill wrote:
| Americans keep saying this and it makes me laugh every
| time, because you didn't learn anything from Vietnam.
|
| Just like in Vietnam, the stated goal was to replace the
| government - in this case, to remove the Taliban - that's
| why you created the Afghan National Army and their flimsy
| democracy. All told, the US has spent $8 trillion and
| several thousand young men on the GWOT. Once the US
| pulled out, the Taliban strolled back into Kabul.
|
| $8 trillion will reduce the US debt by 25%, or pay off
| all student debt, or build 80 million $100k homes.
| Wasted, and the only thing you have to show for it is
| nothing tangible, except more vibrant terror groups, and
| immigrants flooding Europe. Meanwhile, 8k US veterans die
| by suicide yearly.
|
| You had the firepower but failed to achieve your
| political goals. Just like in Vietnam, Iran, Syria, Laos,
| Cambodia, and more countries than I care to mention.
| While ruining the lives of innocent millions, of course.
|
| So, you failed. Admitting it might be hard, but it will
| bring the US to a place of humility and help you avoid
| adventures like this going forward.
|
| And to be pedantic, no you can't raze every sq. km of
| 652,860 km2. Assuming, even just 1000 tons of explosives
| per km2, that's nearly 700 million tons of explosives. At
| $30k a ton, you'd be spending $21 trillion on enough
| explosives.
| jb1991 wrote:
| > and immigrants flooding Europe
|
| You are blaming the US for that?
| churchill wrote:
| Yes, for destabilizing Libya and Syria. Those millions of
| Syrian immigrants that suddenly started flooding Europe
| had been living contently in their homeland. What changed
| starting in 2014? Gaddafi was a major force in stemming
| illegal immigration through the Sahara. What changed in
| Libya in 2011?
| petre wrote:
| The US hasn't destabilized Mexico, Guatemala and El
| Salvador, yet they get migrants from those countries. And
| Gaddafi also got screwed by Szarkozy and Tony Blair. The
| US probably had other plans which didn't quite work out
| as intended.
| churchill wrote:
| Hah! The US has a long and shameful history of meddling
| in Latin America: coups, outright invasions (Panama,
| Grenada, Nicaragua, Honduras, etc.) and overthrows or
| assassinations of democratically-elected leaders
| considered leftist.
|
| Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile, etc.
|
| Haiti: Historian Hans Schmidt notes that, "US Navy ships
| visited Haitian ports to 'protect American lives and
| property' in 1857, 1859, 1868, 1869, 1876, 1888, 1889,
| 1892, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909,
| 1911, 1912, and 1913. Finally, tired of all those round
| trips, the U.S. occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934."
|
| Among others, in the 1980s, a Guatemalan military that
| received U.S. support carried out scorched earth
| campaigns that massacred upwards of 200,000 mostly
| indigenous people [1].
|
| And that's before you count all the other American-
| trained and armed military juntas that systematically
| murdered, tortured, and raped millions of dissidents
| "leftists" with Uncle Sam's blessing.
|
| Wikipedia has an entire page on it: go take a look. [2]
|
| [1] https://repmcgovern.medium.com/decades-of-us-
| intervention-ha.... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uni
| ted_States_involvement_in_r...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > They got humiliated in Afghanistan
|
| We gave up and left for political reasons. Any
| humiliation was self-inflicted.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| The land of democracy, ladies and gentlemen. Rights for us,
| nobody else.
| churchill wrote:
| Funny thing about American meddling is that it always comes
| back to bite the US in the ass. The War of Terror has cost $8
| trillion and there's nothing tangible and lasting the US has
| to show for it. Groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS (esp. their
| networks across Libya, Iraq, etc.) are offshoots of American
| meddling in the region, growing healthily despite everything.
|
| Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iran (now a rabid enemy), Iraq, Syria,
| and Libya, are all failures of that World Police ethos that
| the US refuses to disengage from.
| tazu wrote:
| The American way is creating problems and selling
| solutions.
| churchill wrote:
| They're not really selling solutions if it still costs
| them at the end. For the most part, US foreign policy is
| a net negative for America's pockets and many of their
| "allies."
| csomar wrote:
| They are a _sophisticated_ money siphoning program.
| Socialize the cost of war (taxes), but privatize the
| gains (corporate profit).
| tazu wrote:
| There is no cost, overall it all raises US GDP. Military
| lives are not considered.
| churchill wrote:
| Digging a hole and covering it at a cost of $22 trillion
| will double America's GDP overnight. But it doesn't
| create value for anyone.
|
| All it does is transfer money to the contractor doing the
| digging (in America's case, the military-industrial
| complex) while everyone else becomes poorer.
|
| $8 trillion has been spent on the War on Terror so far.
| Like I said in another comment, that's enough money to
| build 80 million $100k homes, or reduce America's debt by
| 25%, or pay off all student loans, or build 400,000 KM of
| high-speed rail at $20M/km, or give every American
| taxpayer a one-time check of $48k, etc.
|
| Every bomb dropped on Afghanistan or Iraq was money
| diverted from something else useful the US could have
| done.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > it always comes back to bite the US in the ass
|
| Does it? So far millions of traumatised and in various ways
| challenging to deal with refugees are in Europe.
| asynchronous wrote:
| It's a dumb question simply because we know most North Korean
| cyber agents are working abroad- they literally live in China
| or somewhere else and setup infrastructure elsewhere to remote
| into.
| phoenixreader wrote:
| The Chinese government had built the infrastructure for the
| Great Firewall, allowing them to block whoever they want. The
| US does not have this capability.
| willcipriano wrote:
| You certain all those devices in black rooms[0] like Room
| 641A[1] are entirely passive? I'm not.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_room
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
| Terr_ wrote:
| What makes you think the same equipment would have the
| necessary mechanics and capacity for realtime mass-
| filtering?
|
| Even in America, I imagine there are many other budget
| priorities competing for a limited spook-fund, that would
| displace a "national censor-wall but indefinitely inactive
| and secret just in case we need it someday."
| willcipriano wrote:
| You know how the internet and things like Tor are
| products of the Department of Defense?
|
| The State Department has been using the internet (and
| anonymization tools like Tor) to organize dissidents in
| foreign countries for various purposes, often coups. One
| example is the Arab Spring[1].
|
| I'd wager they are very afraid of someone doing it back
| to them, and might have some capability in place. Even if
| it's just to shut the internet off for a time (like
| Pakistan and other nations have done during elections[0],
| maybe in response to US interference) or perhaps prevent
| connections to other nations/the rest of the world more
| generally.
|
| [0]https://www.accessnow.org/campaign/2024-elections-and-
| intern...
|
| [1]https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/arabstudquar.35.
| 3.0255...
| Terr_ wrote:
| So the issue _isn 't_ a PRC-esque Great Firewall, but
| instead a more generic "blanket interruption of service
| in some region for some time"? I feel those are
| significantly different scenarios.
|
| For one, they're would be an _enormous_ backlash if it
| were to somehow effect the many American businesses which
| rely on network access and have significant clout in our
| system. Most of the countries that have tried such things
| either (A) don 't have the economic exposure or (B)
| limited the outage-scope to zones without the same
| stakeholders.
|
| Another aspect is that such coarse interruptions are a
| lot easier to accomplish through a bunch of NSL-weilding
| lawyer-agents contacting ISPs, rather than spending money
| building dedicated hardware infrastructure, in advance,
| in secret, to support a Giant Red Button.
|
| I'm not saying there's no possible Motive, but it's no
| substitute for Means and Opportunity.
| jbkkd wrote:
| Someone did it a while ago:
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/north-korea-hacker-internet-outa...
| EgoIsMyFriend wrote:
| don't bother with the above link if you're not subscribed to
| wired, use this instead:
|
| https://archive.is/rWpjI
| woodruffw wrote:
| Taking you seriously: I'm pretty sure NK has non-oceanic
| interconnects with both China and Russia. So unless your plan
| involves attacking within the internationally recognized
| borders of either and living with the consequences, the answer
| is "not easy."
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I assume the US is willing to do this because we do it
| frequently, though not with China or Russia. I'm not sure
| about the DPRK, and was asking more of a technical question
| than a political one. Like, how many cables would we need to
| cut and how exposed are they? I'm aware they're a nuclear
| power (ish) and the politics aren't trivial.
| woodruffw wrote:
| I don't think we go around frequently cutting international
| interconnects? Do you have a source for this?
| rwmj wrote:
| This wouldn't work against the bad actors as they could just
| proxy through a friendly (to NK) country. And would set a bad
| precedent of using Internet access as a tool for sanctioning.
| konart wrote:
| >Serious question, if the United States decided to unilaterally
| cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be
| to do? Could we just knock out a few cables?
|
| You will have to cut cables going to Russia (and\or out of
| Russia) and China at least.
|
| Not to mention wireless comms.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| How many? Near as I can tell a few drone bombs could
| accomplish this. We love drone bombing other countries.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Not ones with nuclear weapons. Or one that manufactures all
| the toys that keep Americans happy.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| That's true, but are they really going to lob their two
| nukes at Maui just because we drone bomb a few wires? The
| Kims like being alive.
| socksy wrote:
| The Kims are likely the only reliable bet for people who
| would actually survive a nuclear war and the following
| nuclear winters, if the book Nuclear War by Anne Jacobsen
| is to be believed. They're the only ones that have built
| their bunkers deep enough (under mountains) that modern
| thermo nuclear weapons wouldn't destroy them, and they
| have years of supplies down there.
| csomar wrote:
| No. At least not because of that. But if they drone bomb
| Seoul, would you continue the escalation? Because the
| escalation can lead to that.
|
| Also DPRK is threatening Seoul and Japan, not the USA.
| tempodox wrote:
| I'm not sure drone pilots would cooperate. They are
| accustomed to live targets, after all.
| nprateem wrote:
| Just need to add it as a new mission in GTA6 and there'll
| be no problem in 3 years time.
| jnordwick wrote:
| Ender's Game IRL
| segmondy wrote:
| USA doesn't care about North Korea. We love to have Boogeymen.
| What would the military industrial complex do and be without
| our Boogeymen?
| xadhominemx wrote:
| We care very much about North Korea as they have nuclear
| weapons and share a land border with our ally
| lucasRW wrote:
| They already partially operate from China. They would just do
| that more. They could even have their own connection to China
| and connect to the Internet from there. It's going to be a
| wack-a-mole thing that they easily win.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| I wasn't assuming it to be a strategy that was permanently
| feasible.
| icameron wrote:
| I think their main connection comes through china, but if that
| was cut off they could still use star links.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| If you mean SpaceX's Starlink they obviously can't. Elon
| clearly controls who uses it where.
|
| If you are just using the term generically and mean other
| satellite connections, maybe, but limiting them to satellite
| internet only where we couldn't take out a dish would
| certainly be crippling to the crimes I'm referencing!
| bn-l wrote:
| > They certainly don't allow their citizens to use it for
| anything else, and they don't allow their citizens to leave the
| country because they would never come back.
|
| I never thought about it like this but it's the largest open
| air prison on earth.
| vincnetas wrote:
| nope, earth is the biggest open air prison ;) and only guard
| it needs is the gravity.
| Fokamul wrote:
| Tell me you're American without telling me you're American :D
| citizenpaul wrote:
| N.Korea is a Chinese weapon, unfortunately. To do something
| like cut off their internet would be considered an attack on
| China. China is their border where do you think they get
| connected to the internet.
| petre wrote:
| Sure. As if they couldn't reroute through any other country.
| They're already cut off by their leadership, except for the
| state sponsored cybercriminal groups which don't need a NK IP.
| godelski wrote:
| > cut North Korea off from the Internet, how hard would that be
| to do? Could we just knock out a few cables? > Is this
| just not logistically feasible?
|
| NK shares a physical border with China and Russia. Not to
| mention that we can send data by means other than a physical
| wire.
|
| Even if you were willing to block Russia and China from "the
| internet" (lol) it would be nearly logistically impossible.
|
| Even if you were willing to destroy all sense of privacy and
| track every single packet sent (what a terrible dystopian
| idea), there's still going to be ways to fake this. It would
| only make it harder, not impossible.
| consumerx wrote:
| Them vs. governments and banks in the past 100 years. You decide
| who's looking like children when compared. Lol
| szivsx wrote:
| 1000$
| earnesti wrote:
| So all the crypto went to paxful/noones, and was converted to
| fiat there. Should be pretty straightforward to subpoena them and
| get all data about their fiat accounts?
| DrNosferatu wrote:
| Interesting to see that, apparently, Monero was never used.
| andrepd wrote:
| Indeed, I would assume applications needing untraceability
| would use XMR
| hanniabu wrote:
| Because most of the crypto economy is on Ethereum. Monero's own
| hubris and "better than thou" mentality quarantined itself from
| the rest of the ecosystem.
| evilfred wrote:
| code is law, no?
| seydor wrote:
| Thank god we have crypto or else we d never know
| aabhay wrote:
| Indeed. We would have been sitting with our measly treasury
| bills, without a care in the world
| n_ary wrote:
| Question from my curious mind. How are the Metamask instances of
| specific device getting replaced by modified/malware-d version?
| How does that even work?
| stuffoverflow wrote:
| Basically they first need to get a remote shell and are then
| able to replace the extension source with the modified one.
|
| This article does a good job explaining it more in depth.[0]
|
| 0: https://securelist.com/the-bluenoroff-cryptocurrency-hunt-
| is...
| n_ary wrote:
| Thanks! That is some extensive level of social engineering,
| reconnaissance and exploiting. Takes a lot of patience and
| discipline to pull such sophisticated heist.
| Fokamul wrote:
| Why these Lazarus geniuses didn't use XMR at all, huh?
|
| I like it, that somebody thinks $4B is a lot. If FIAT CASH was
| trackable as crypto, your head would explode.
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