Paradigm’s Samczsun warns there’s ‘more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group’
Both samczsun and ZachXBT have issued warnings after the Bybit hack last month
Artwork by Crystal Le
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There’s no denying that North Korea’s Lazarus Group is a threat, especially as crypto works overtime to be seen as a safe and acceptable industry (sorry degens, there are still corners for you).
Paradigm’s samczsun highlighted the good, the bad, and the ugly, a month after the Lazarus Group pulled off the biggest digital heist in history. Oof, that hurt to write.
The upside is that only one bad actor (which, I guess on the downside, is North Korea) has been so successful in stealing funds.
But “there’s more to the DPRK than just the Lazarus Group,” he warned.
Unfortunately, the team would later find out that the group had managed to compromise SafeWallet’s own infrastructure, deploying “a malicious payload specifically targeting Bybit. This was a level of sophistication that no one had considered or been prepared for, and it was a major update to many of our threat models.”
But there are ways to stay safe, samczsun noted. He urges caution across the board for individual folks like us. And organizations should “install Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) software” on work devices for security prior to any hack and to ensure visibility afterwards.
Samczsun’s tune was slightly more optimistic than Paradigm advisor ZachXBT, who earlier this month said the effort to try to freeze funds tracked to the Bybit attack had been an “eye-opening” experience.
“The industry is unbelievably cooked when it comes to exploits/hacks,” he wrote.
Samczsun’s holding out hope that the FBI’s unit dedicated to both tracking and preventing DPRK attacks is strong, an encouraging sign given his recent work with them.
Whether or not the FBI paired with super sleuths such as ZachXBT and samczsun — alongside members of Seal 911 — remains to be seen.
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