DOJ Disrupts FaceStealer Scheme Tied to More Than $400 Million in Crypto Theft - www.tokenpost.com
The U.S. Justice Department Thursday disrupted cloud infrastructure used in a North Korean crypto-theft scheme that stole more than $400 million over 18 months.
The FBI calls the operation FaceStealer, where hackers took over targets' contacts' accounts and invited crypto workers to fake Zoom or Microsoft Teams meetings. They played recordings of trusted people and staged technical problems to persuade victims to install malware.
While AI-generated deepfakes of prominent crypto and Web3 figures have appeared, stolen recordings of real people remain the scheme's dominant method. The FBI seized more than 900 webcam videos under a federal warrant.
Separate theft
Government and private-sector efforts had frozen more than $2.7 billion tied to a Binance theft on or about Oct. 29, which involved more than $6 billion in virtual assets. Courts authorized seizure or restraint of more than $1.2 billion of those funds.
The FBI attributes the theft to TraderTraitor, a separate North Korean operation.
New targets
The FBI says FaceStealer actors have increasingly targeted open-source developers, apparently to gain access to software repositories.
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