Hackers Steal $37 Million By Tricking Employee with Job Offer

One of the industry’s leading crypto payments providers, CoinsPaid, saw $37 million stolen by hackers in late July.

The company has blamed North Korean hacker group, Lazarus, for the theft. The perpetrators had tried multiple attempts to steal from the company. However, their successful attempt involved a fake job offer and an unsuspecting CoinsPaid employee.

Touting a fake but lucrative job offer, the hackers managed to convince a CoinsPaid employee into downloading malicious software onto their work computer, posing as a task during a job interview. 

The software installed by the employee then allowed the group to obtain critical information and keys from the victim’s computer. This was then used to steal $37.3 million from the company, which was subsequently laundered using swap services and mixing protocols. 

CoinsPaid further claimed that the hackers had been looking to infiltrate the organization for as long as six months, prior to the hack, with methods such as DDos and BruteForce.

What is CoinsPaid?

CoinsPaid is an industry-leading crypto payments provider, and has been operating since as early as 2014.

In Q1 of 2023, the company processed $3.7 billion in volume, across 6.4 million transactions,  and is responsible for as much as 8% of worldwide Bitcoin transactions.