#crypto theft

There are eight links to articles regarding crypto mining and theft in my feeds from the last 24 hours. Eight. To put it in perspective, generally a ‘hot’ topic will garner maybe two or three mentions across the entirety of a day’s news briefs. Cryptocurrency is a topic I rarely cover, in and of itself. I will mention it mostly while talking about ransomware campaigns and the risk to crypto wallets from infostealers. With the overwhelming number of links talking about it today, I guess it’s time to dig into the subject.

It’s digital money, to put it in the plainest terms. But even that is stretching the definition of ‘money’ a little, since cryptocurrency is not considered legal tender in many places in the world. In the US, for instance, it’s legal own crypto, and to exchange it in online spaces, but it is not fungible in real world, offline settings. One cannot pay their grocery bill with it. According to its Wikipedia page, it must meet with six criteria to be considered genuine:

The system does not require a central authority; its state is maintained through distributed consensus.

The system keeps an overview of cryptocurrency units and their ownership.

The system defines whether new cryptocurrency units can be created. If new cryptocurrency units can be created, the system defines the circumstances of their origin and how to determine the ownership of these new units.

Ownership of cryptocurrency units can be proved exclusively cryptographically.

The system allows transactions to be performed in which ownership of the cryptographic units is changed. A transaction statement can only be issued by an entity proving the current ownership of these units.

If two different instructions for changing the ownership of the same cryptographic units are simultaneously entered, the system performs at most one of them.

I’ll be honest, the entire concept of cryptocurrency strikes me as something that’s expanded out of a Mandela effect. It’s not real, and yet people treat it as if it is. In 2020, over five thousand types of cryptocurrencies existed globally, and all of them are based on nothing more than speculation with the occasional ‘collectible’ thrown in. It’s betting on fantasy football. Or the stock market. As empty as the basis for speculation often is, it still drives real world economies. Crypto trades daily in amounts that are equivalent to millions of dollars, although the majority of people surveyed in 2024 by Pew Research Center think that it’s unsafe and unreliable as an investment. And that brings us back to those eight articles I mentioned at the start.

Half of those links pertain to Chainanalysis’s report that 2025 saw a significant rise in crypto theft from North Korea, over 2 billion dollars’ worth. Another talks about how crypto mining – which is how many of these thefts are occurring – is being achieved through abusing compromised AWS credentials. An unrelated article from Kapersky reports on a new infostealer that among other things is installing a crypto miner into infected devices, as well as stealing from crypto wallets.

It’s not all bad news, however. The final two articles are about the FBI led disruption of the E-Note exchange, which allegedly has laundered $70 million over the last eight years. Much of the currency in the exchange was garnered from ransomware payments and account takeover attacks. Even in light of this takedown, my advice? If you want to invest in something ultimately worthless, collect pennies before they stop being minted. At least they’re tangible and can’t disclose your personal data.

Hacking groups linked to North Korea are increasingly using exchanges in Russia to launder crypto, Chainalysis revealed. The shift in their strategy, registered by the blockchain forensics firm, coincides with a drop in the value of the stolen cryptocurrency this year in comparison with the record-breaking 2022. Chainalysis Report Alleges New Alliance Between North Korean and Russian…

North Korean hackers have stolen $721 million from Japan since 2017, accounting for 30% of the crypto thefts worldwide. According to a study by a U.K.-based compliance specialist, North Korea employs hacking and ransomware to steal crypto assets, especially in Japan, Vietnam and Hong Kong, the leading Asian crypto hubs.  North Korean Hackers Eye On The post North Korean Crypto Thefts Surpass $2.5…