Hacking News
North Korea Stole $400 Million in Crypto Using Deepfake Video Calls
The U.S. Justice Department announced that North Korean hackers used a social-engineering scheme involving secretly recorded footage and AI deepfakes to steal over $400 million in cryptocurrency over the past 18 months. The scheme, called 'FaceStealer,' involves hackers tricking targets into meetings using accounts stolen from previous victims, then playing prerecorded webcam footage of trusted contacts to win their confidence. The hackers then generate deepfake videos of well-known figures to make the ruse more convincing, and offer a fake technical glitch to install malware. The FBI seized over 900 webcam recordings of victims under a federal warrant, and the DOJ tied the operation to North Korean groups known as Sapphire Sleet, BlueNoroff, and APT38, warning they have targeted open-source software developers for supply-chain attacks.