North Korea Is Attacking The Blockchain. Here’s What that Means

On the 17th of October, Google's Threat Intelligence Unit made a bit of a shocking announcement. North Korean hackers from the hacking group UNC 5342 were delivering sophisticated viruses through smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain and using them to steal cryptocurrency. According to the aspect, the group has been doing this since February.

It's now November. It's part of an ongoing social engineering campaign where they target vulnerable individuals through a compromised website, used to remotely install malware on a person's device, and then use this malware to target their data or steal their crypto. The attack is known as Etherhiding, and it's not new.

According to cybersecurity experts, it first emerged back in 2023 and has been in use since then. It takes advantage of transactions on public blockchains to store and retrieve malicious files. Etherhiding, this popular because it's really difficult to track down, is really difficult to stop.