A North Korean hacking group has stolen more than $400 million (£302m) in cryptocurrency in the past 18 months by using surreptitiously recorded images of people to lure victims to use compromised software, the FBI.
The group involved, referred to as Sapphire Sleet, UNC1069, Stardust Chollima, APT38, and BlueNoroff, is distinct from the North Korea-linked entity that last month stole a record $6.3 billion (£4.76bn) from Binance, the FBI said.
That hack also used complex social engineering techniques, Binance said.
Webcam compromise
The hackers initially compromise a target’s webcam and secretly record video of the person, hijack the person’s communication accounts, and send messages to the person’s contacts, delivering a fake video link to the new target.
Using the video of the first target, the hackers then lure the second target into a videoconference using a fake version of a popular application such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet.
When the conference begins, the application appears to show a technical error, prompting the second target to click on a link, which infects the user’s computer and social media accounts.
This compromise is then used to gather video and contacts to target more people.
Software supply chain targeted
The threat group is increasingly targeting open-source software developers and maintainers using the FaceStealer technique to gain access to their devices and software repository accounts, with the aim of compromising the software supply chain, the FBI said.
The FBI and the US Department of Justice said they had disrupted cloud infrastructure used by Sapphire Sleet to carry out the hacks, including identifying and seizing more than 900 videos of people working in the crypto and web development industries around the world.
In April, hackers believed to be linked to North Korea compromised the open-source developer library Axios, widely used to create web applications, in an attack Google researchers linked to Sapphire Sleet, which Google tracks as UNC1069.
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