How North Korea Tried To Steal $1 Billion | Investigators

this is without doubt the most audacious cyber crime that's ever been attempted the idea that you would steal a billion dollars from a national bank and try and spirit it away across international time zones is absolutely astonishing the lazarus group is suspected to be hackers supported by north korean intelligence they're behind the hacking into major corporations like sony pixel entertainment sony pictures entertainment is reeling from what may be the biggest and most devastating computer hacking in hollywood's history taking studios off air taking down tv studios taking down banks attempting to steal a billion dollars from bangladesh the 81 million dollar money laundering scandal is now considered one of the biggest bank heists in asia and then moving into cryptocurrency spreading a virus around the world it looked at first like an attack just on hospitals in the uk but it's now becoming clear that this malicious software has run riot around the world security experts say this is one of the worst and most widespread pieces of malware they've ever seen the risk and threat of cyber not just from suspected north korean hackers but i would say from from hackers operating in other countries as well we're all vulnerable i'm jeff white i'm an author and investigative journalist i'm the co-host of the lazarus heist podcast i'm jean lee i'm a journalist i'm co-host of the lazarus heist podcast for the bbc world service the lazarus group are kind of legendary in cyber security circles and there are many theories about who they report to how they're organized how the orders come down but what it comes down to is that they are state-sponsored hackers supported by north korea our podcast starts in hollywood with the sony hack around the release of their 2014 film the interview you want us to kill the leader of north korea and at the end of the film spoiler alert apologies kim jong-un gets killed north korea got extremely annoyed about this film they felt it was a deep insult to their pride they tried to get sony to pull the film without not happening the north korean hackers decided to break into sony and take the company down the hack shut down the company's entire computer system and according the la times employees were reduced to using old-fashioned pen and paper to complete assignments then they start releasing the emails of the sony pictures entertainment executives deeply personal deeply confidential stuff and it was an embarrassment for sony pictures because so much gossip was revealed in the in the emails that they released and it was so extreme that compelled then president barack obama to name north korea as a suspect in a press conference and we can confirm that north korea engaged in this attack what's absolutely astonishing is the dust had barely settled on the sony attack we're already onto the next target they'd already moved on it was an example of using social engineering so creating profiles and social media and creating identities and sending emails and interacting with the recipient of that email they used a dodgy cv they pretended to be a job applicant called rasal alarm and they sent a cv into bangladesh bank and said hey i'd like to work for the bank you know here's my cv could you could you take a look at it opening up the cv opened up the attachment triggered the virus got the computer infected they found out that bangladesh bank has a billion dollars sitting in the new york federal reserve bank they're going to transfer the money out fine it's a billion dollars where are you going to send it to kim jong-un's personal bank account no obviously not and the escape route they mainly lined up was through the philippines and the timing of this starts to get really interesting because the hack is happening in bangladesh the money is in new york it's being sent to the philippines their mission was to steal a billion us dollars from the bank of bangladesh and they managed to carve out a five-day window when almost no one would notice that all of this hacking was taking place it was not only the weekend in bangladesh but it was also the start of the lunar new year here in asia which is a big holiday so even when bangladesh bank manages to get through to new york fed and they piece it all together they're phoning up the philippines and people aren't answering the phone because it's a bank holiday there it's a perfectly almost immaculately planned bank heist taking advantage of three different time zones and several bank holidays across the world they didn't manage to make off with the full billion dollars but they came very close it was only because of a couple errors that that money ended up not going through but in the end they managed to get 81 million dollars so they've got 81 million it's not bad not a bad payday but the problem the hackers now have is it still traceable so yes they've moved the money from new york into the philippines and those bank accounts but you can still trace it and this is another amazing element of the whole process of how you steal a billion dollars they had to wash that money as dirty money so then they take the money and they move it into casinos in the philippines why casinos well number one the casinos weren't regulated by money laundering regulations at the time so you pitch up to a casino with 81 million dollars nobody asks many questions but number two perhaps most importantly they change the money into casino chips they gamble the chips over the tables they get their winnings they cash their winnings into check you can't link that check they walked out with with the money that came in at the beginning and one of the things that was so remarkable was the casino workers telling us that these groups of men would come in and just almost like they were working a job sit down to gamble at baccarat and didn't seem to react if they won and didn't seem to react if they lost now you may think hang on aren't bangladesh bank on the case trying to get their money back yes they are they've traced the money to the philippines they go to the casinos they say look this is our money but the casinos remember aren't regulated by money laundering regulations it's also a remarkable revelation in how the suspected hackers plotted out every step of this process from the hack itself to how they get the money out of the banks and how they clean up that money and then of course get it back to north korea the u.s investigators are correct and this was the work of north korea and they were trying to steal a billion dollars out of bangladesh bank in a way it makes perfect sense north korea has hit the buffers north korea is broke it was about stealing money that the regime desperately wanted and needed to build its nuclear program the problem is of course those nuclear weapons those tests and those missile tests were met with sanctions by the international community and those sanctions cut off north korea from the international community and cut off its finances one of the most perplexing things and one of the reasons i think we underestimated the north korean hackers is because they are so disconnected from the internet i mean this is a country where most of the population doesn't have electricity for most of the day and much less computers the only people in north korea have access to computers are people working for the government but what the regime has done is really focus its resources on cultivating an elite core group of computer experts kids who show an aptitude for math are plucked from school and put into intensive mass training what's interesting is north korea often sends its hackers overseas so defectors who've subsequently testified about this and spoken to us for the podcast talk about being dispatched often to china if you are chosen as a cyber warriors even though you receive a better rations the life there is very difficult because it's a military for instance you have to get up at six o'clock to work 10 or 15 or 20 hours without sleeping you know the whole life would be isolated from rest of north korea one of the fascinating details that we uncovered in the course of our investigation was that these suspected hackers are not just these shadowy figures operating under the veil of of cyberspace but they actually have a face and a name and that name is bak jinhyuk he is back in pyongyang as far as we know which means he's out of the reach of the fbi but he remains a suspect the key suspect in the bangladesh bank heist packaging york according to the us investigators was a key member of the las vegas group and is linked to sony pips entertainment the hack on bangladesh bank and the wannacry ransomware attack of 2017. the global cyber attack where hackers demanded money and exploited a dangerous security hole which froze computers at over 100 000 companies in 150 countries ransomware attacks can be extremely lucrative computer hackers send you a dodge email dodgy attachment you open up your computer gets infected and the virus scrambles all of your files the hackers then issue you with a demand and say in order to unscramble your files pay us a ransom one strain of ransomware in one month made 350 million dollars for the gang behind it that's 10 million dollars a day the amounts are absolutely astonishing the wannacry ransomware was entirely different than the bangladesh bank heist because it didn't require you to click on a link it just went ran rampant through computer systems and unleashed this virus on its own the spread was astonishing 24 hours something like 200 000 computers in more than 150 different countries and of course in the uk one of the main bodies that was here was the nhs a one of the world's largest employers b massive amount of computers in the nhs but it wasn't only that it was major telecommunications firms transportation companies boeing telefonica deutsche bahn i mean if you think about the extent of it it's absolutely terrifying thankfully for us there was an off switch and it brought the whole thing to a sort of shuddering hole part of what the north koreans want to do is not only to to make money but also to show us that they can upend our lives that we shouldn't forget that they remain a threat and that makes us all vulnerable they've got into cryptocurrency and they've learned and embraced the cutting edge of financial crime to make more than a billion dollars for themselves and all of this money certainly according to us investigators goes back into the pockets of north korea a pariah regime which is spending some of that money on nuclear weapons

Channel: VICE News

Views: 419,945

Keywords: yt:cc=on, documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, film, short film, movies, VWN, Vice World News, world news, news, investigators, jean lee, geoff white, lazarus group, bangladesh bank heist, sony hack, wannacry, ransomware, crypto, north korea, the interview, seth rogan, kim jong un

Id: snckTSsnSgA

Length: 11min 10sec (670 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 18 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ihatethisshit_6710]

well north korea is pretty powerful. we got alot of the money back but we still have a $81 million loss.

[u/notNIHAL]

What do you want us to do? Drop the bangabandhu satellite on them? Don't be naive lol. Much bigger funds are accumulated in Swiss banks. If you want beef, then go after the people who stole from their own.

[u/our_cut]

They couldn't steal the whole $1 Bil tho, they got away with $58 mil

[u/after21BannedAccount]

North Korea lol it's our fault for leaking the info, we had corrupt officials who were willing to let a foreign nation stole our money just because they will get some cash from it. And leave Korea aside, I saw in a US based research paper that Bangladeshi politicians and govt officials money laundered more than 100 billion is last 10 years. What about that, though?

[u/SkinlessFox]

Lol, are you taking any measure to prevent the thousands of crores going out of the country?

[u/throwlol134]

They didn't exactly steal $1bn, they tried to. They got away with $81mn; still a huge amount, but the fact stands that it's not a billion. Also, it could've been anyone other than NK given how piss-poor our security infrastructure was as revealed after the hack.

[u/NeverG1veUp1000]

Do you think that Bangladesh has the necessary intelligence and manpower to create a system so that foreign governments don’t steal the citizens’ money? I don’t think so.

[u/human304]

NK is chinas pet dog. And it also has rabies (insane leader). So we can't do anything.

But we should be asking this question How can a poverty ridden nation manages to maintain a state sponsored elite hacking group whereas our state bank employees use PCs with critical infos for downloading torrent?

[u/SNaKE_hsssss]

lol ...BAL is looting left and right..