Among the terror financing entities tracked by TRM Labs in 2022, there was a 240% year-on-year increase in the use of Tether - against a mere 78% rise in bitcoin use. The overwhelming majority of those actors collected donations in the stablecoin Tether (USDT). Over the course of 2022, there was a significant increase in the use of TRON among terrorist groups and associated fundraising campaigns, with some using it exclusively. TRM identified multiple pro-ISIS groups raising tens of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency to spread propaganda and recruit fighters. While Bitcoin was the exclusive currency for terrorist financing in 2016, it has been essentially replaced by assets on the TRON blockchain, which the report says accounted for 92% of terrorist financing in 2022. It is not just Lazarus Group that has seen opportunity beyond bitcoin. North Korea has shifted again from Bitcoin to Ethereum and other blockchains as cyber actors move funds between chains to obfuscate transactions and exploit coding mistakes and protocol weaknesses. John Park of Harvard’s Kennedy School in that same interview, to laundering funds in Bitcoin amidst tougher economic sanctions. Microsoft has called for a “ Digital Geneva Convention” requiring governments to report vulnerabilities to the creators of the software instead of stockpiling, selling or exploiting them.North Korea shifted from its reliance on mining and coal trade with China, explained Dr. “If you are going to create something that can cause this much damage you have to protect it.” “The government has a responsibility like with nuclear weapons to make sure they don’t fall into the hands of the wrong people,” he said. Jeremy Wittkop, chief technology officer of security company Intelisecure, argues that if governments are to stockpile weapons they need to secure them better. “We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.” “The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call,” said Smith, urging nations to treat cyber weapons in the same way that physical weapons are treated. “This is an emerging pattern in 2017,” Smith said, adding that the latest attack represents a “completely unintended but disconcerting link” between nation-state action (the NSA) and organized criminal action (the ransomware creator). The WannaCry ransomware attack has now now hit more than 200,000 computers in 150 countries, crippling hospitals, governments and businesses. That’s why we think that Lazarus is not just another advanced persistent threat actor,” said Kaspersky, which also found attacks originating from IP addresses in North Korea. It’s something that requires strict organization and control at all stages of operation. “This level of sophistication is something that is not generally found in the cybercriminal world. Kaspersky is among the research teams to have been studying Lazarus Group for years, and in April it published a detailed “under the hood” report exposing the group’s modus operandi. However, over time researchers found more clues to build the case against the North Korea-linked cybergang. “We believe it’s important that other researchers around the world investigate these similarities and attempt to discover more facts about the origin of WannaCry,” said Kaspersky Lab in a blogpost, pointing out that in the early days of the Bangladesh bank attack, there were scant clues linking it to the Lazarus group. However the re-used code appears to have been removed from later versions of WannaCry, which according to Kaspersky gives less weight to the false flag theory. Shared code doesn’t always mean the same hacking group is responsible – an entirely different group may have simply re-used Lazarus group’s backdoor code from 2015 as a “false flag” to confuse anyone trying to identify the perpetrator. Similitude between #WannaCry and Contopee from Lazarus Group ! thx - Is DPRK behind #WannaCry ? /uJ7TVeATC5- Matthieu Suiche May 15, 2017
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