Bitcoiners sent crude messages to the German government by way of small donations; CoinStats says North Korea’s Lazarus Group may be behind the recent $2.2 million exploit and more.
Bitcoiners troll German government BTC wallet
Germany’s Bitcoin wallet is back up from its near-zero balance.
A group of Bitcoin trolls have been peppering the German government’s once-empty Bitcoin wallet with tiny donations over the last 48 hours. address with custom messages in their addresses.
After selling just under 50,000 Bitcoin (BTC) — worth $3 billion at current prices — over the last few weeks, the German government’s Bitcoin wallet reached a new low balance of nearly zero on July 12.
However, several Bitcoiners took it upon themselves to make an attempt at humor by sending just over $330 worth of BTC in several transactions between July 12 and July 14, per data from blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence.
Several of the original sender’s Bitcoin wallet addresses touted ‘vanity’ names, including addresses that began with “1Fuckyou” and “1ELonMUSK.”
Lazarus Group likely behind recent CoinStats hack
Crypto portfolio manager CoinStats says the notorious North Korea-linked hacking consortium Lazarus Group was likely behind a June 22 hack that resulted in the loss of $2.2 million across 1,590 wallets.
“We gathered enough evidence to confidently attribute the attack to the Lazarus Group or a related organization with a nation-state level of sophistication and resources,” said CoinStats in a July 12 statement.
CoinStats explained that hackers had gained access to several key parts of their infrastructure and third-party service providers, including its HashiCorp Vault which secured wallets and APIs.
On June 26, CoinStats CEO Narek Gevorgyan said he believed an employee had fallen victim to a sophisticated social engineering attack that saw them download malicious software onto a work device.
CoinStats noted that all affected software and infrastructure had been removed and the investigation into the exploit was ongoing.
Canadians lose $373K to deepfake crypto scams
Three Canadian men have reportedly lost a combined $373,000 to a deepfake crypto scam involving AI-generated versions of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, promising guaranteed returns from crypto investment.
Ontario man Mohammad Haque told CTV News Toronto on July 12 that he stumbled across a video on social media that appeared to show Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explaining how people could make strong returns from investing in the crypto market.
Haque said he invested a total of $226,000 in the fraudulent scheme, and at one point, his account showed that he’d amassed a total portfolio of $445,000.
However, when he made efforts to withdraw his funds he found he could no longer access the money and that he had been defrauded out of the entire sum of his initial investment.
Mississauga man Darrell Budnick said he was defrauded to the tune of $130,000 after investing in a sham crypto investment scheme after seeing a similar AI-generated video on social media.
Another Ontario man Giovanni Pugliano of Hamilton said he invested in a crypto project that stemmed from a deepfake video of Elon Musk on YouTube — which also promised guaranteed outsized returns from small investments in the crypto market.
“I ended up putting in a lot more than I expected and all of a sudden, I was broke,” Pugliano told CTV News, adding that his losses totaled around $17,000.
More than $148 million in fraudulent investment losses have been reported in the first six months of 2024 across Canada — with the majority of those stemming from fraudulent crypto schemes — according to data from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
Source:- COINTELEGRAPH
