Blockchain | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Monday announced sweeping actions targeting the North Korean information technology (IT) worker scheme, leading to the arrest of one individual and the seizure of 29 financial accounts, 21 fraudulent websites, and nearly 200 computers. The coordinated action saw searches of 21 known or suspected "laptop farms" between June 10 and 17, 2025, across 14 states in the U.S. that were put to use by North Korean IT workers to remotely connect to victim networks via company-provided laptop computers.  "The North Korean actors were assisted by individuals in the United States, China, United Arab Emirates, and Taiwan, and successfully obtained employment with more than 100 U.S. companies," the DoJ said . The North Korean IT worker scheme has become one of the crucial cogs in the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea (DPRK) revenue generation machine in a manner that bypasses international sanctions. The fraudulent operation...

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said it has filed a civil forfeiture complaint in federal court that targets over $7.74 million in cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and other digital assets allegedly linked to a global IT worker scheme orchestrated by North Korea. "For years, North Korea has exploited global remote IT contracting and cryptocurrency ecosystems to evade U.S. sanctions and bankroll its weapons programs," said Sue J. Bai, Head of the Justice Department's National Security Division. The Justice Department said the funds were originally restrained in connection with an April 2023 indictment against Sim Hyon-Sop, a North Korean Foreign Trade Bank (FTB) representative who is believed to have conspired with the IT workers. The IT workers, the department added, gained employment at U.S. cryptocurrency companies using fake identities and then laundered their ill-gotten gains through Sim to further Pyongyang's strategic objectives in violati...

A Chinese-language, Telegram-based marketplace called Xinbi Guarantee has facilitated no less than $8.4 billion in transactions since 2022, making it the second major black market to be exposed after HuiOne Guarantee . According to a report published by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, merchants on the marketplace have been found to peddle technology, personal data, and money laundering services. "The USDT stablecoin is the primary payment method, with the market having received $8.4 billion in transactions to date," the company said . "Some transactions can be linked to funds stolen by North Korea." Xinbi, like HuiOne, has offered its services to scammers in Southeast Asia, including those responsible for so-called romance baiting schemes (formerly referred to as "pig butchering"), which has become one of the most lucrative forms of cybercrime in recent years. What's notable about these criminal bazaars is that they are entirely run on Tele...

If you invite guest users into your Entra ID tenant, you may be opening yourself up to a surprising risk.  A gap in access control in Microsoft Entra's subscription handling is allowing guest users to create and transfer subscriptions into the tenant they are invited into, while maintaining full ownership of them.  All the guest user needs are the permissions to create subscriptions in their home tenant, and an invitation as a guest user into an external tenant. Once inside, the guest user can create subscriptions in their home tenant, transfer them into the external tenant, and retain full ownership rights. This stealthy privilege escalation tactic allows a guest user to gain a privileged foothold in an environment where they should only have limited access. Many organizations treat guest accounts as low-risk based on their temporary, limited access, but this behavior, which works as designed, opens the door to known attack paths and lateral movement within the resource t...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that purports to be an application related to the Solana blockchain, but contains malicious functionality to steal source code and developer secrets. The package, named solana-token, is no longer available for download from PyPI, but not before it was downloaded 761 times . It was first published to PyPI in early April 2024, albeit with an entirely different version numbering scheme. "When installed, the malicious package attempts to exfiltrate source code and developer secrets from the developer's machine to a hard-coded IP address," ReversingLabs researcher Karlo Zanki said in a report shared with The Hacker News. In particular, the package is designed to copy and exfiltrate the source code contained in all the files in the Python execution stack under the guise of a blockchain function named "register_node()." This unusual behavior suggests that...

Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (aka Bundeskriminalamt or BKA) has seized the online infrastructure and shutdown linked to the eXch cryptocurrency exchange over allegations of money laundering and operating a criminal trading platform. The operation was carried out on April 30, 2025, authorities said, adding they also confiscated 8 terabytes worth of data and cryptocurrency assets worth €34 million ($38.25 million) in Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Dash. According to the BKA, eXch[.]cx, existed since 2014 and offered cryptocurrency swapping services, allowing its users to exchange digital assets. It was available both on the clearnet and the dark web. eXch "specifically advertised on platforms of the criminal underground economy (UE) that it did not implement any anti-money laundering measures," the BKA said in a statement. "Users were neither required to identify themselves to the service, nor was user data stored there. Crypto swapping via eXch was...

The Russia-linked threat actor known as COLDRIVER has been observed distributing a new malware called LOSTKEYS as part of an espionage-focused campaign using ClickFix-like social engineering lures. "LOSTKEYS is capable of stealing files from a hard-coded list of extensions and directories, along with sending system information and running processes to the attacker," the Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) said . The malware, the company said, was observed in January, March, and April 2025 in attacks on current and former advisors to Western governments and militaries, as well as journalists, think tanks, and NGOs. In addition, individuals connected to Ukraine have also been singled out. LOSTKEYS is the second custom malware attributed to COLDRIVER after SPICA , marking a continued departure from the credential phishing campaigns the threat actor has been known for. The hacking group is also tracked under the names Callisto, Star Blizzard, and UNC4057. "They ar...

Multiple threat activity clusters with ties to North Korea (aka Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK) have been linked to attacks targeting organizations and individuals in the Web3 and cryptocurrency space. "The focus on Web3 and cryptocurrency appears to be primarily financially motivated due to the heavy sanctions that have been placed on North Korea," Google-owned Mandiant said in its M-Trends report for 2025 shared with The Hacker News. "These activities aim to generate financial gains, reportedly funding North Korea's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program and other strategic assets." The cybersecurity firm said DPRK-nexus threat actors have developed custom tools written in a variety of languages such as Golang, C++, and Rust, and are capable of infecting Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. At least three threat activity clusters it tracks as UNC1069, UNC4899, and UNC5342 have been found to target members of the cryptocurren...

The Ripple cryptocurrency npm JavaScript library named xrpl.js has been compromised by unknown threat actors as part of a software supply chain attack designed to harvest and exfiltrate users' private keys. The malicious activity has been found to affect five different versions of the package: 4.2.1, 4.2.2, 4.2.3, 4.2.4, and 2.14.2. The issue has been addressed in versions 4.2.5 and 2.14.3. xrpl.js is a popular JavaScript API for interacting with the XRP Ledger blockchain, also called the Ripple Protocol, a cryptocurrency platform launched by Ripple Labs in 2012. The package has been downloaded over 2.9 million times to date, attracting more than 135,000 weekly downloads. "The official XPRL (Ripple) NPM package was compromised by sophisticated attackers who put in a backdoor to steal cryptocurrency private keys and gain access to cryptocurrency wallets," Aikido Security's Charlie Eriksen said . The malicious code changes have been found to be introduced by a...

Blockchain is best known for its use in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, but it also holds significant applications for online authentication. As businesses in varying sectors increasingly embrace blockchain-based security tools, could the technology one day replace passwords? How blockchain works  Blockchain is a secure way to maintain, encrypt, and exchange digital records of transactions. Its security benefits stem from its decentralized nature: this distributed ledger can be accessed by participants across various nodes , and is unalterable. All users retain control as a group, meaning no single person can change the ledger. How could this provide security benefits? One advantage is the ability to create a 'self-sovereign ID' that alters the way that a user identifies themselves online. Essentially, it creates a private ID for a user that they control, rather than relying on a centralized institution : they can logon to a particular website or service using their identity on...

Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a malicious Python package on the Python Package Index (PyPI) repository that's equipped to steal a victim's Ethereum private keys by impersonating popular libraries. The package in question is set-utils , which has received 1,077 downloads to date. It's no longer available for download from the official registry. "Disguised as a simple utility for Python sets, the package mimics widely used libraries like python-utils (712M+ downloads) and utils (23.5M + downloads)," software supply chain security company Socket said . "This deception tricks unsuspecting developers into installing the compromised package, granting attackers unauthorized access to Ethereum wallets." The package aims to target Ethereum developers and organizations working with Python-based blockchain applications, particularly Python-based wallet management libraries like eth-account. Besides embedding the attacker's RSA public key to...

Safe{Wallet} has revealed that the cybersecurity incident that led to the Bybit $1.5 billion crypto heist is a "highly sophisticated, state-sponsored attack," stating the North Korean threat actors behind the hack took steps to erase traces of the malicious activity in an effort to hamper investigation efforts. The multi-signature (multisig) platform , which has roped in Google Cloud Mandiant to perform a forensic investigation, said the attack is the work of a hacking group dubbed TraderTraitor , which is also known as Jade Sleet, PUKCHONG, and UNC4899 . "The attack involved the compromise of a Safe{Wallet} developer's laptop ('Developer1') and the hijacking of AWS session tokens to bypass multi-factor authentication ('MFA') controls," it said . "This developer was one of the very few personnel that had higher access in order to perform their duties." Further analysis has determined that the threat actors broke into the developer...

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) formally linked the record-breaking $1.5 billion Bybit hack to North Korean threat actors, as the company's CEO Ben Zhou declared a "war against Lazarus." The agency said the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was responsible for the theft of the virtual assets from the cryptocurrency exchange, attributing it to a specific cluster it tracks as TraderTraitor, which is also referred to as Jade Sleet, Slow Pisces, and UNC4899. "TraderTraitor actors are proceeding rapidly and have converted some of the stolen assets to Bitcoin and other virtual assets dispersed across thousands of addresses on multiple blockchains," the FBI said . "It is expected these assets will be further laundered and eventually converted to fiat currency." It's worth noting that the TraderTraitor cluster was previously implicated by Japanese and U.S. authorities in the theft of cryptocurrency worth $308 mil...

Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit on Friday revealed that a "sophisticated" attack led to the theft of over $1.5 billion worth of cryptocurrency from one of its Ethereum cold (offline) wallets, making it the largest ever single crypto heist in history. "The incident occurred when our ETH multisig cold wallet executed a transfer to our warm wallet. Unfortunately, this transaction was manipulated through a sophisticated attack that masked the signing interface, displaying the correct address while altering the underlying smart contract logic," Bybit said in a post on X. "As a result, the attacker was able to gain control of the affected ETH cold wallet and transfer its holdings to an unidentified address." In a separate statement posted on the social media platform, Bybit's CEO Ben Zhou emphasized that all other cold wallets are secure. The company further said it has reported the case to the appropriate authorities. While there is no official conf...

Ransomware attacks netted cybercrime groups a total of $813.5 million in 2024, a decline from $1.25 billion in 2023. The total amount extorted during the first half of 2024 stood at $459.8 million, blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis said, adding payment activity slumped after July 2024 by about 3.94%. "The number of ransomware events increased into H2, but on-chain payments declined, suggesting that more victims were targeted, but fewer paid," the company said . Adding to the challenges is an increasingly fragmented ransomware ecosystem, which, in the wake of the collapse of LockBit and BlackCat, has led to the emergence of a lot of newcomers that have eschewed big game hunting in favor of small- to mid-size entities that, in turn, translate to more modest ransom demands. According to data compiled by Coveware, the average ransomware payment in Q4 2024 was at $553,959, up from $479,237 in Q3 . The median ransomware payment, in contrast, dropped from $200,000 to $...

Cybersecurity researchers have identified infrastructure links between the North Korean threat actors behind the fraudulent IT worker schemes and a 2016 crowdfunding scam. The new evidence suggests that Pyongyang-based threamoret groups may have pulled off illicit money-making scams that predate the use of IT workers, SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) said in a report shared with The Hacker News. The IT worker fraud scheme , which came to light in late 2023, involves North Korean actors infiltrating companies in the West and other parts of the world by surreptitiously seeking employment under fake identities to generate revenue for the sanctions-hit nation. It's also tracked under the names Famous Chollima, Nickel Tapestry, UNC5267, and Wagemole. The IT personnel, per South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), have been assessed to be part of the 313th General Bureau, an organization under the Munitions Industry Department of the Workers' Party of Korea. ...