SEAL Advisory on DPRK Threat to Crypto Exchanges | Hacker News Reader

SEAL Advisory on DPRK Threat to Crypto Exchanges

securityalliance.org

38 pointstranspute12 comments

Ironically DPRK would probably make the most money if they just ran honest banks and exchanges without the FATF and KYC nonsense, as a sort of refuge from regulation that island nations used to provide. There is massive demand and few options.

I don't understand how banks in a country that is completely cut off from the international financial system would be profitable.

I vouched your comment, it appears yours are dead by default. Being cut off from the financial system I'm interested in hearing your opinion on what that is like.

Unfortunately I'm afraid to venture too far into how/why I think it would work and being Virgil Griffith'd, and intentionally leaving it as a pure speculation on a hypothetical.

Crypto is cut-off from the international financial system but can be bridged by P2P. DPRK could allow, for example, exchanges without KYC that accept US customers. There is "sky high" demand for such a product (as in trillions). Russia used to have eBTC and it was one of the highest volumed exchanges.

My guess is that despite the DPRK appearing to be independent (nuclear et al), it really is not. NK envisaged starting not just an exchange but a whole "deregulated/free" city but China prevented them from doing that.

They do have other free enterprises, for example see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rason_Special_Economic_Zone

How is this working?

A random US Citizen cannot wire USD to NK. Their bank is not going to allow it. Their credit card company is not going to allow it. If you try to mail physical USD the USPS is going to confiscate it [1].

So, this leaves a US Citizen buying crypto on a KYC exchange and then transferring it to the NK exchange. Why? Just keep the crypto on the KYC exchange at this point.

[1]: https://pe.usps.com/text/imm/il_015.htm#ep1639364

You cannot "wire" USD to the UK either. The money always remain in the US system, it is just that individuals from the UK "control" it. What happens when you have a P2P market is that individuals from the US will provide the transfer services on behalf of the Korean. It is much easier to enforce this with big and a few financial institution than a P2P situation. Especially when the premium to execute the transaction is high.

> Use an isolated device (such as a Chromebook) for signing transactions

Can a Chromebook function as an isolated device for long?

Not in the UK that's for sure.

Nor anywhere else, being an American company bound by the CLOUD Act. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act

They at least used to work fine offline AFAIK, except for the initial setup which did require Internet. Not a great option, though.

Related ongoing thread:

Bybit loses $1.5B in hack but can cover loss, CEO confirms - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130143

> This can come in the form of a technical interview, where the target is instructed to clone a git repository [containing malware] and to install the dependencies and/or run the project

Jesus

Reply on news.ycombinator.com