Is the North Korean Government Testing the Security of Blockchain?
One of the greatest attributes of blockchain technology is its security. By running a completely transparent distributed ledger anyone in the world can verify the validity of the transactions it contains. This is the beauty behind block creation because it keeps everyone accountable. As the process builds – every block created after the initial one simply solidifies the transactions’ validity because duplication or manipulation becomes exponentially difficult. The structure of this technology is meant to eliminate any anonymity by potential thieves and hackers as well. If you’re a crypto, then all of this will be old news to you (and I’m it sure could be better said 😊).
North Korea and its leader Kim Jung Un have made it into international news, not only because he and Trump are playing some middle-school name calling, but also because Kim is trying anything to subvert the heavy economic sanctions placed on his country. The traditional trade routes have been dismantled and so, naturally, it would follow logic that he would try to obtain monies through other avenues. Here’s where cryptocurrencies make the stage.
The information of how he is obtaining the various bitcoins and altcoins is coming from many different avenues. Potentially stealing from unsuspecting wallets is one tactic. Infecting computers and other devices with malware is yet another. According to CNN:
“One of them, known as FALLCHILL, has likely been in use since 2016 and allows hackers to monitor and control infected computers remotely. It typically spreads through files dropped by other malware or when users inadvertently download it by visiting websites that are already infected…. The other type of malware, Volgmer, infects computers through a technique known as spear phishing, where users get an apparently legitimate email with a link that then spreads the virus.”¹
In the latest news “[a]nalysts at a US cybersecurity firm have detected an apparent new installer for a virus that mines Monero and sends it to a university in Pyongyang, North Korea.”² According to the article in Cointelegraph:
“It’s not clear if we’re looking at an early test of an attack, or part of a ‘legitimate’ mining operation where the owners of the hardware are aware of the mining. On the one hand the sample contains obvious messages printed for debugging that an attacker would avoid. But it also contains fake filenames that appear to be an attempt to avoid detection of the installed mining software.”
Does Kim Jung Un really care if he gets caught using theft and hacking techniques to acquire crypto monies? I suspect not. But, I do think that his country’s actions will warrant a close analysis by cybersecurity experts to ascertain the extent of blockchain’s security and mining legitimacy. Nothing is completely theftproof, but it will be interesting to see how North Korea’s actions will shape the future of cryptocurrencies.
What are your thoughts? I’d love to hear them.
¹ http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/15/technology/north-korea-hacking-fallchill-volgmer-fbi-dhs/index.html