Article
Suspected North Korean Actors Pull off the Largest Crypto Heist in History
Arete Analysis
Threat Actors
On February 21st, 2025, approximately $1.4 billion USD in Ethereum was stolen from cryptocurrency exchange Bybit. Ethereum held a price of $2600 per token as of February 21st and is one of many cryptocurrencies the exchange holds. Some quick division shows that at least 500,000 Ethereum coins were stolen, making this the largest crypto heist to date in value. Both TRM Labs and Chainalysis have assessed the threat actor to be associated with North Korea with high confidence due to an overlap in crypto wallets tracked as belonging to North Korea.
What’s notable and unique?
North Korea has a long history of financial fraud, money laundering, and other illicit activity. Members of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) military regularly participate in illicit activities, including remote worker fraud, cryptocurrency hijacking and mining, money mules, wire fraud, and even ransomware. These cybercriminal activities allow DPRK to bypass international sanctions to raise funds for their military.
The threat actors compromised one of Bybit’s offline cold wallets, digital wallets that store private keys needed to access other cryptocurrency wallets completely offline. Due to the wallet being disconnected from the internet, the most likely sources of the compromise were a supply chain attack, insider threat, or a private key compromise.
The alleged North Korean threat actors may not be able to fully monetize the theft. The funds must now be laundered before being taken out at another exchange, as most of the initial wallets to which funds were transferred have been marked as having stolen funds on legitimate cryptocurrency exchanges. The laundering will likely be a two-step process. First, the funds will be exchanged for a native cryptocurrency, such as Ether or BTC, as it is difficult to track stolen funds across cryptocurrency blockchain transfers. Next, the actors will attempt to cover their tracks further by layering the funds to throw investigators off their trail. Shortly after the compromise the actor used 50 wallets and placed 10,000 coins in each, further supporting the alleged theft of 500,000 coins in total.
Bybit has offered a 10% bounty on the stolen coins, leading to a potential purse of $140 million. So far, $42.89 million of the stolen funds have been frozen. However, it is unclear whether this is the work of bounty hunters, law enforcement, or Bybit.
Conclusion
While crypto-related attacks may seem like a new concept at face value, this is the most recent heist in a string traversing ten years. In 2024 alone, North Korean threat actors were associated with $1.5 billion out of $2.2 billion in theft. With North Korea conducting these thefts, the funds enter a broader cybercriminal ecosystem, increasingly invading the insurance ecosystem. Most recently, these threats have expanded into North Koreans fraudulently joining North American and European companies, stealing their source code, and then extorting the companies. Funds stolen in cryptocurrency thefts like the Bybit thefts are funding infrastructure supporting this increasingly stealthy form of extortion, consequently resulting in funds supporting the North Korean military.
Fortunately, as threat actors and money launderers strengthen their ability to hide stolen money, blockchain analytic techniques and toolsets have also evolved. Often, the best way to prevent crypto heists and cybercrime is to implement sound security principles, including password management, vulnerability patching, and end user training.
Sources
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CMS Vulnerability Leads to ClickFix Campaign
Threat actors compromised at least 700 education and technology websites in a recent ClickFix campaign by exploiting a critical SQL injection flaw (CVE-2026-26980) in the Ghost content management system (CMS). Adversaries combined the vulnerability with the ClickFix social engineering tactic to steal admin keys and inject a malicious JavaScript that delivers a fake Cloudflare or CAPTCHA verification pop-up, tricking victims into copying and pasting a malicious command into their systems.
What’s Notable and Unique
Rather than targeting the end user first, this campaign is unique in its initial exploitation of the system, followed by social engineering attempts. This hybrid attack style is likely being leveraged to bypass traditional defenses.
This recent campaign also highlights how trusted web properties can be weaponized at scale and coupled with unpatched CMS vulnerabilities. Rather than using the CMS compromise to perpetrate a single attack, threat actors turned it into a supply-chain attack that ultimately affected over 700 trusted websites.
Analyst Comments
As network defenders and their tools enhance threat detection capabilities, adversaries increasingly seek methods to bypass these defenses. By combining vulnerability exploitation, social engineering techniques, and staging for ancillary attacks, this campaign successfully bypassed traditional defenses and inflicted significant impact. Defending against hybrid cyberattacks requires comprehensive security controls beyond simply patching vulnerabilities. Organizations should focus on limiting movement within the environment, detecting abuse of trusted applications, and preventing end-user manipulation.
Sources
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Threat Actors Leverage Fake JPEG Files for Initial Access
In a recent campaign, researchers observed threat actors using fake JPEG image files as a delivery mechanism to initiate the deployment of additional malicious components. The false JPEG files are typically distributed via phishing emails or other social engineering-based lures, and are actually PowerShell-based malware that deploys a trojanized version of ConnectWise ScreenConnect to establish and maintain persistence in the compromised environment.
What’s Notable and Unique
This campaign leverages JPEG images as the initial lure, where the images are not merely decoys but part of the infection workflow. Victims are typically led to download or open an image that triggers hidden execution logic or redirects them to a payload-delivery sequence that initiates later stages of the intrusion chain.
The attack chain is designed to blend into legitimate environments, making detection more difficult. Execution typically relies on scripted or native Windows components, often including PowerShell or other living-off-the-land binaries, enabling fileless or near-fileless execution and reducing forensic artifacts on disk.
The multistage design ensures that the initial JPEG does not directly contain the full payload but instead triggers retrieval or decryption steps that progressively assemble the final malicious components in memory.
Analyst Comments
This campaign illustrates how threat actors continue to blur the line between legitimate file handling and malicious execution chains, indicating potential overlap with remote management or administrative tooling. The use of JPEG-based staging combined with script-based execution reflects a broader evolution toward a stealth-first intrusion design, in which file formats serve as triggers rather than payload containers.
Sources
OPERATION SILENTCANVAS : JPEG BASED MULTISTAGE POWERSHELL INTRUSION
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