How Crypto Is Fighting Back Against North Korea | The Breakdown

About this episode

The episode discusses how North Korea is leveraging crypto and DeFi protocols for illicit activities, featuring insights from blockchain investigator Nick Bax.

North Korea has had IT workers embedded in DeFi protocols since DeFi Summer — and they’re pretty good devs. Nick Bax, blockchain investigator and SEAL 911 incident responder, joins us to break down how crypto crime has evolved from SIM swaps to nation-state social engineering. We unpack the Monero inflation bug, Arbitrum’s 9/12 multisig gold standard, how DPRK workers now use facilitators to rent real identities, and what it actually takes to break into onchain investigation. Enjoy! TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Introduction (02:01) DeFi is Under Attack (03:11) Contagion Onchain (04:40) Nexo Ad (05:16) Nick Bax Interview (06:40) Incident Response Triage (08:43) Preemptive Due Diligence (10:20) From SIM Swaps To Remote Access (13:45) Multisig Best Practices (14:37) AI Speeds Up Attacks (15:36) Nexo Ad (17:14) Decentralization Tradeoffs (19:17) Monero Bug Hard Fork (20:05) Trusting Multisig Guardians (21:05) Two Of Five Risks (22:00) DeFi Decentralization Debate (23:41) Proactive Threat Hunting (25:25) DPRK Worker Red Flags (27:32) Security Teams And Intel (30:21) Thorchain And Laundering (33:26) Whack A Mole Reality (35:31) Becoming Onchain Investigator (37:06) Closing Thoughts FOLLOW GUEST…

People in this episode

Guest: Nick Bax

Topics covered

• crypto crime
• DeFi protocols
• nation-state social engineering
• onchain investigation
• DPRK workers
• multisig best practices

Keywords

• crypto
• North Korea
• DeFi
• blockchain investigation
• SIM swaps
• multisig
• Monero bug
• DPRK workers

Sponsors

Nexo

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Blockworks

Books & works: DeFi, Monero, Arbitrum

Places: North Korea

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