On Tuesday, October 16th, Group-IB, an anti-cybercrime company, released a report saying that since the start of 2017 of the 882 million dollars stolen from crypto exchanges, 571 million dollars was taken by the Lazarus Group, just shy of 65% of the total sum stolen. Most of the Exchange hacks were done so by using spear phishing, social engineering, and malware.
However, who are the Lazarus Group?
No one knows precisely who is apart of the Lazarus group or who is behind it. In 2017 Kaspersky Lab reported that there was a connection between a sub-group within the Lazarus Group, that Kaspersky named Bluenoroff, and North Korea. Although the majority of the Lazarus Group specializes in infiltration cyber attacks and spying, the Bluenoroff part works on financial cyber attacks. Group-IB, in 2017, said that they have evidence to support the theory that the Lazarus Group is connected to North Korea.
"Through investigation of attacks on banks, we have proved that there is a strong connection between Lazarus and North Korea, while the analysis of IP addresses enables us to locate the attackers. We have detected and thoroughly analyzed the C&C infrastructure used by Lazarus. Our research shows how hackers gained access to the banks' information systems, what malware they used, and who their attempts were aimed at."
- Dmitry Volkov head of Group-IB's threat intelligence department and co-founder of Group-IB.
To check out the full report by Group-IB go to their website:
https://www.group-ib.com/blog/lazarus
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
Although it is unclear what the Lazarus Group is after, there are ways to protect yourself and your interests as much as you can. As hackers get more sophisticated we have to as well to combat them.
L-Vertex, an international company, is coming out with biometric authentication to enhance the security of your Smart Wallet. By using their Finger Vein Authentication System you would no longer need to have remembered your passwords or risk a spear phishing scenario, as you would sign into your account by scanning your finger vein pattern.
L-Vertex says more information on release dates and other news will be announced as the project develops.
More technology is always coming out to help increase your security and the security of your investments. It's important to do your research and see what can you do to protect your investments and hopefully, in the near future, we shall see fewer and fewer hacker attacks.
-Written by James Hepburn