North Korea Stole Millions in Cryptocurrency to Fund Its Missile Program, Says UN Report (bbc.com) 80
North Korea funded its missile programs with millions of dollars in stolen cryptocurrency, reports the BBC, citing a new UN report:
Between 2020 and mid-2021 cyber-attackers stole more than $50m (£37m) of digital assets, investigators found. Such attacks are an "important revenue source" for Pyongyang's nuclear and ballistic missile programme, they said. The findings were reportedly handed to the UN's sanctions committee on Friday.
The cyber-attacks targeted at least three cryptocurrency exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia.
The report also referenced a study published last month by the security firm Chainalysis that suggested North Korean cyberattacks could have netted as much as $400m worth of digital assets last year. And in 2019, the UN reported that North Korea had accumulated an estimated $2bn for its weapons of mass destruction programmes by using sophisticated cyber-attacks....
The US said on Friday that North Korea — formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) — carried out nine missile tests last month alone.
The cyber-attacks targeted at least three cryptocurrency exchanges in North America, Europe and Asia.
The report also referenced a study published last month by the security firm Chainalysis that suggested North Korean cyberattacks could have netted as much as $400m worth of digital assets last year. And in 2019, the UN reported that North Korea had accumulated an estimated $2bn for its weapons of mass destruction programmes by using sophisticated cyber-attacks....
The US said on Friday that North Korea — formally known as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) — carried out nine missile tests last month alone.
Where do they spend it? (Score:2)
What with all the pretty strict sanctions, it makes one wonder where they are buying the wherewithal to build these weapons.
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Very easy if you have enough money. I suspect also there are lot of governments who aren't too concerned what the North Koreans buy as long as it's paid for in US dollars, gold etc.
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I suspect the number of governments willing to do business with NK is very small. Particularly the ones who have the materials required to make rockets and bomb components.
Re:Where do they spend it? (Score:4, Informative)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's not some huge secret. China is North Korea's largest trade partner and has been for almost as long as North Korea has existed.
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You assume they want to actually attack the US, and now. It would result in their total destruction.
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I'm not entirely convinced that NK leadership would restrain themselves from launching missiles as their final acts.
No one on earth would nuke NK. Level them completely and bring back napalm on a whole new scale? Maybe. But no one would risk the fallout in the region.
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The suggestion was that NK could more easily "smuggle the weapons through our porous borders". The only reason for doing something like that is to use them, and were NK to ever use weapons of mass destruction against the US there would be a devastating response.
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Even claiming to have nuclear weapons "hiding in their adversaries' capitols" is an enormous threat escalation and would result in severe repercussions.
Re:Where do they spend it? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't get it.
The anti-US propaganda is just bullshit.
The real purpose of having nukes is that it gives you some PROTECTION from being the target of the next US invasion. Afghanistan didn't have nukes, neither did Iraq. But Pakistan has, and despite at that time being just as much an enemy of the US was left in peace.
NK wants nukes out of fear. Don't forget that the US already had a war in Korea! This is not some nonsense assumption out of thin air. Yes, it started with NK aggression, I'm not saying they're the good guys. But especially given the last few decades, can you fault anyone for not wanting to be the next Iraq or Afghanistan?
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Pakistan an enemy of the USA? Ha. USA has been an ally of Pakistan during the Cold war and sided with Pakistan during the Bangladesh war - even before their nuclear weapons program. It is still an American ally and gets a shitload of foreign aid and military hardware support.
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Some ally. They actively fund terrorist organizations and lets not forget they harbored Bin Laden practically inside their national military academy.
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You certainly live in a delusional small world.
NK wants nukes because they are run as a totalitarian regime, and those regimes require projections of power.
Check your facts. I won't even bother to argue your bizarre correlations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. Talk about distorted reality.
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NK wants nukes because they are run as a totalitarian regime, and those regimes require projections of power.
For what purpose? Controlling your own people is done much better with regular, military and secret police as other regimes have demonstrated.
So which other purpose does it serve? Come down from general, content-less statements and name something specific that can be analysed.
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Merely having nuclear weapons is one thing, but Pakistan doesn't launch delivery systems with ever-increasing range that could eventually target the USA. NK is actively aggressive, it isn't just a defensive posture.
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Pakistan doesn't have to. It has an enemy at its border (India) and it knows that the whole world is afraid of those two countries nuking each other because the fallout wouldn't be local.
The nearest thing NK has to threaten that's an ally of the West is Japan, and given that they were nuked by the US within living memory, I wouldn't count on the west to much are about them if push came to shove.
Given the amount of pressure, sanctions and war-like actions (fly-overs, military excercises, etc.) the US conduct
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Re: Where do they spend it? (Score:2)
I guess it was only a matter of time (Score:3)
For all the buzz about how secure and impenetrable cryptocurrencies are supposed to be, attacks on them and, most importantly, exchanges, are well within the reach of nation state actors.
The cost of a 51% attack on, say, Bitcoin, today, . [crypto51.app]
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...today, is $1.6m/hour [crypto51.app]. That's well within the reach of even modest nations.
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If anyone had "hacked" the blockchain or public/private keys the entire thing would have unraveled by now.
These attacks are on peripheral software, exchanges, wallets, etc that were poorly secured.
Saying crypto is insecure because someone's wallet was stolen is like saying banks are insecure... because your physical wallet was stolen.
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Well, bank deposits are insured. Good luck recovering BTC from your lost and/or stolen wallets.
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Insurance doesn't stop thieves. It just costs banks money to retain customers who get robbed.
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If anyone had "hacked" the blockchain or public/private keys the entire thing would have unraveled by now.
In the particular case of "hacking" by mounting a 51% attack (which will work even if the crypto algorithms are flawless), I suspect the only reason nobody has done so is that it wouldn't be profitable for them to do it. Not even the North Koreans want to kill the goose that is currently their supplier of golden eggs.
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You think North Korea has close to the hashrate of non-North Korea combined??
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https://dailycoin.com/the-8-co... [dailycoin.com]
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Dude NK doesn't have the hashrate to pull a 51% attack on the major blockchains.
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No, they quite literally could not.
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The *government* of NK would totally be able to do this if they chose to.
To expand on DrMrLordX's completely uninformative response...
North Korea can not mount a 51% attack against Bitcoin because there literally is not enough electricity generation in the entire country to power the machines required to do it. It's questionable whether they have the ability to add any power generation on their own. They don't seem capable of doing so without China shipping them equipment. They're an agrarian society with next to no heavy industry. They can't fabricate hashing ASICs by thems
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An exchange isn't quite the same as a wallet in your jacket, is it? Really! Since it is the exchanges that are getting hacked, that's what you have to look at, not some straw man.
If bitcoin wishes to be considered a legitimate currency, then exchanges must be secure. We can, quite legitimately, demand far higher security from an electronic system than we can from a physical bank because we have a great deal of understanding of how to write secure software and build secure platforms on which to run that soft
New market idea (Score:5, Funny)
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NFTs are relatively recent and their nuclear program still under development so plain stealing crypto seems more likely.
more reason not to get involved in promoting or using it.
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Seems to me the money laundering (Score:3)
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China props up NK for two reasons. First it worries about an influx of refugees should NK collapse. Not sure why they worry about that IMHO, flooding south seems a more likely option. The second and more important to them is that they would then have US troops stationed on their border. My guess is where NK to collapse and a reunited Korea to emerge then once the dust had settled the US would be happy to leave the Korean peninsular. Certainly there would be a large draw down of troop numbers.
Well duh! (Score:2)
And the best Korea is showing us the way to the future. This is the proof.
Re:Well duh! (Score:4, Funny)
If all you ever hear about is thefts and military dictatorships, of course you're going to think that is the primary focus of blockchain commerce. Classic skewed reporting.
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No, we also hear about money laundering and illegal activity. Illegal doesn't automatically mean immoral but if you don't think that a currency which is attractive for things like buying drugs or guns is also attractive to human traffickers then start. fucking. thinking.
BTC and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies use orders of magnitude more energy than existing payment systems while also enabling profiting from large-scale crime, if you don't think most of the uses of that are going to be harmful then aga
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If all you ever hear about is thefts and military dictatorships, of course you're going to think that is the primary focus of blockchain commerce. Classic skewed reporting.
Exactly - in fact, this is not just skewed reporting, it is lies, LIES! I tell you!
The fact is that there has never been money lost in any cryptocoin, it has a track record of only going up, and the idea that criminals are using it is pure liberal hogwash, and the lies of Nancy Pelosi, and the illuminati.
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How is it the perfect currency for the future when it can't cope with the past and barely manages with the present? It's useless off the grid, in a way that the Mondex card wasn't.
That's not to say Mondex was perfect, it was a 1990s compromise based on the technology of the time. It's no more representative of what a card or credstick could do now than the Tomorrow's World demo of a mobile phone in 1974 was. What it did was demonstrate that you don't need blockchain or an Internet for a bank-free fully elec
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How is it the perfect currency for the future when it can't cope with the past and barely manages with the present? It's useless off the grid, in a way that the Mondex card wasn't.
That's not to say Mondex was perfect, it was a 1990s compromise based on the technology of the time. It's no more representative of what a card or credstick could do now than the Tomorrow's World demo of a mobile phone in 1974 was. What it did was demonstrate that you don't need blockchain or an Internet for a bank-free fully electronic currency.
I keep trying to break Poe's law. Looks like it can't be broken.
Stole ? (Score:1)
Now we can trace their launderers and suppliers (Score:1)
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If they're using something like BTC then yes.
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BTS? I knew it!
How can this happen? (Score:5, Funny)
I remember reading that this was the future of money.
That it was, by it's very nature, secure beyond reproach.
That soon, all other forms of currency would be obsolete.
That we will no longer need banks or middlemen or regulation.
That crypto was a law unto itself.
Did something happen that I missed?
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Did something happen that I missed?
Yeah... they tried to put it into pratice.
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Money is an illusion, digital money more so. Yesterday, I exchanged some numbers on my bank card for beer. The beer was real, and so were the tits of the barmaid, but she would not let me verify my conjecture.
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Seems like its working pretty well.
I have it on good authority (Score:2)
This is all digital, right? And digital property should be free to take, based on many discussions here regarding digital movies, music, and books - it's just copying bits, it's not hurting anybody. So I don't see what North Korea did that was wrong?
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That could be the basis of a new economic theory. Free money. I think this might already exist in the investment banking industry, but the mean bastards are keeping it to themselves.
$50M hypersonic missile program? (Score:2)
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NK a is remarkably efficient and capable nation if they developed hypersonic missiles for $50M.
They are so efficient, that the size of their army is greater than the population, or so my spreadsheet model says. There may be flaws in this analysis, due to my sources being eliminated.
I think what the people of North Korea need right now is proper hair care. I reckon there is a conspiracy to pollute the world with bad hair. How else can you explain the conjunction of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson? The hair style of comrade Kim does seem to have matured a bit of late, but still needs work. Just think ho
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At first I wanted to answer with a joke that they have that covered thanks to their official list of allowed hair styles, but then I fact-checked and it turns out that despite this being reported on many times in the media, it's actually not that simple:
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyl... [yahoo.com]
Re: $50M hypersonic missile program? (Score:2)
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Good link. I had come to most of the same conclusions by myself, this is a great, concise summary of what one really ought to know before forming one's own opinion.
Canada is good at maple syrup, bad at citrus (Score:3)
> NK are capable-evil, or incompetent-evil. They can't be both.
Maybe in the children's book you're writing.
In the real world, people and countries are good at different things.
Canada is a strong producer of maple syrup and lumber. Citrus fruit not so much.
Hawaii is good at tourism and pineapples; petroleum no.
North Korea has heavily invested in "hacking". Lil Kim's wet dream is to be a threat to big countries like the US, to be treated as an equal to the superpowers. (When in fact the NK economy is ro
Re: Canada is good at maple syrup, bad at citrus (Score:2)
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1) How much did you get paid for this bull and who did it?
2) Real propaganda is never consistent.
3) The US does not have to use propaganda against NK, they do such a crappy job of presenting themselves.
4) The US does not claim NK is capable or incompetent. That never happened. We claim they don't give a crap about their people, so they let people starve and give out poor jobs.
5) The US makes no claim to be competent or incompetent, we are a large, successful nation with a solid mix of both.
7) As to any
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7) As to any moron that thinks the US makes war on other nations, you are a fool.
There's literally TWO lists of american wars on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's also hundreds of other articles on the subject, such as https://archive.globalpolicy.o... [globalpolicy.org] that includes the various coups around the world the US has staged. But you seem to subscribe to the ridiculous interpretation put forth (and immediately debunked) in https://theworld.org/stories/2... [theworld.org] which says that strictly speaking congress hasn't issued a formal declaration of war sinc
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Wrong Saddam Hussein was the one claiming to have weapons of mass destruction and was in multiple breaches of the 1991 cease fire agreement. Basically it turns out the Iraq was very weak after the first Gulf war and the pretence they still had weapons suited the belief that it would be daft to make war with him. Then when it looked like the US would invade he changed his tune but by that point it was too late.
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Ah, the miracles of the winner writing history. Sorry boy, I was there and remember clearly who said what. I can close my eyes and I have an image of the "chemical weapons factory trains" the US administration claimed the CIA had discovered.
Not claiming Saddam was a good guy. Not shedding a single tear for him. And that he boasted about military capabilities beyond what he really had - yeah well, name one state leader who doesn't.
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As to any moron that thinks the US makes war on other nations, you are a fool.
Sitting here in the USA I can't help but notice that we've invaded a bunch of other nations for no reason but profit.
The US is a nation like any other. A-holes like you keep attacking us or our allies then getting all upset that we uphold the treaties we publicly stated we would uphold.
Treaties? We wipe our asses with those any time there's no backlash for doing so. Look at how we have disregarded the terms of treaties with the natives around here. The USA does not. fucking. believe. in. treaties.
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America had a problem with turning their farmlands into dust bowls due to sheer incompetence, but managed to get people to the moon.
Competence at one thing doesn't mean competence at anything else, and America is remarkably incompetent when it comes to the environment (or infrastructure). To be fair, most other countries have demonstrated they're equally incompetent or worse, but the inexcusable naivety of one doesn't really justify the inexcusable naivety of another.
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Your Fox is showing. Put on a skirt.
bullshit meter (Score:1)
I smell bullshit.
First, that's not a large amount of money for a military programm.
Second, even if they stole that crypto-currency, they still need to turn it into actual currency in order to pay real-world goods and services with it. I doubt that rocket scientists take their payment in Bitcoin or high-tech parts can be ordered online with ETH.
I'm not a fan of crypto-currencies (or more precisely: The Bitcoin type), but this smells like some trainee at a PR company was asked to come up with some anti-crypto
ROTFL! (Score:2)
Oh, cryptocurrency is so secure because blockchain mumble-mumble-mumble, and we don't need no third parties (like banks, with insurance on our accounts) (we won't pay taxes)....
Looks like some of you paid taxes to NK.
A bargain! (Score:1)
Funding those kinds of devices for only $60m? Can we hire them? It would be at least 10x that here.