North Korean hackers stole $400M in crypto by faking video calls with victims' own faces
North Korean hackers used fake video calls in $400M crypto hack, says FBI
The FBI says state-sponsored North Korean hackers have taken over $400 million in cryptocurrency from more than 900 victims in 18 months through a scheme dubbed FaceStealer. Hackers lure targets in crypto and web3 onto imposter versions of Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet, then play pre-recorded videos of people the victim knows, with audio that appears to malfunction. A prompt to "fix" the audio installs malware, and the calls are secretly recorded to seed the next round of scams.
If you can't imagine a scenario where you might fall prey to it, you are not thinking creatively enough.
- mmastrac
I blogged about this earlier this year - I think they reached out to me as part of my crate work and tried to get me to download a booby-trapped repo with a remote shell.
Insidious attack, it felt very real, they had a compelling fake network of sites and companies
- geekgod382
Related: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/30/how-crypto-hac...
Cryptocurrency theft is estimated to generate half of the country’s foreign currency income
- u2secured_team
There were obvious signs that things should look fishy, but I understand people cannot be vigilant all the time, and hence the trap. Once way to keep remining employees and staff is constant refresher courses. But this has been a problem haunting my workspace as well
- walrus01
I really hope someone is able to obtain a screen-recording video of this as an example. I'd like to see just how good the 'fake' person on the other end really is... To date all the reports of this have been in written text form after the fact.
- tehjoker
The DPRK noted that Donald Trump said that he would take possession of recovered stolen crypto as a state reserve. Their media noted dryly that when the coins are recovered, it would be good to watch where they go and that information should lead one to ask qui bono.
The funny think about the DPRK is that because no one will ask a single critical question about something bad said about them, you can say literally anything and pin the blame on them.
https://coinpedia.org/research-report/u-s-strategic-bitcoin-...