The FBI and Justice Department announced on Thursday, November 12, that they disrupted a North Korea-linked scheme called FaceStealer, which officials say stole more than $400 million in cryptocurrency, Nextgov reported. The Hacker News said the theft ran for roughly 18 months. Authorities seized the cloud infrastructure behind the campaign and more than 900 webcam recordings of victims.
According to Nextgov, attackers sent meeting invitations from hijacked Telegram, LinkedIn, Slack or Discord accounts. The link led to a fake Zoom or Microsoft Teams page showing a recording of a familiar person, sometimes with fake participants. A message then claimed the audio was broken and told the victim to run a script or paste commands into a terminal. That installed malware that logs keystrokes, captures screens and keeps access, while the fake meeting recorded the victim’s webcam so the footage and contacts could be reused.
Security firm Arctic Wolf first reported the campaign in April, counting over 400 victims in more than 20 countries, The Hacker News said. A later update counted 677 targets in 58 countries, over 80% of them founders or C-suite executives. The FBI also said a developer’s computer was compromised in an attempt to insert malicious code into widely used software, but it was stopped before spreading widely, Nextgov reported.
Officials said FaceStealer and the October Binance theft likely involved different North Korean actors, Nextgov reported.
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Sources:
Nextgov: FBI disrupts intricate North Korean fake-call scheme
The Hacker News: FBI says North Korean hackers stole over $400 million
Decrypt: North Korea-linked hackers use deepfake video calls to target crypto workers
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