The Blockspace Pod: How North Korean Hackers Stole $300M+ Via Telegram w/ Taylor Monahan
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.7 • 698 Ratings
🗓️ 31 January 2026
⏱️ 67 minutes
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Summary
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| 0:00.0 | It starts with a telegram account and it's the telegram account has been taken over by the threat actors. |
| 0:06.7 | It used to belong to like a real person like you. |
| 0:09.4 | When you get on the call, their scam version of Zoom will basically tell you that your audio device, |
| 0:15.1 | it can't hear you, your audio device isn't working, you need to do something. |
| 0:18.7 | And then the threat actor will also be in telegram being like, I can't hear you. Like, I see you, but I can't hear you. What's going on? They then prompt you to download an Apple script, usually, which just completely wrecks your computer with, like, the deepest malware. They're very helpful. These scammers are very helpful. They'll help you troubleshoot your issue. They held me troubleshoot a little bit too well because I, the, my Mac's permissions were |
| 0:41.3 | set up in such a way that the original link did not automatically download the malware. |
| 0:45.8 | So I had to run the script through terminal. I feel more on in retrospect, because that should |
| 0:50.0 | have been, you know, the alarm that's blowing off. But everything else up to that point, |
| 0:54.2 | it's like I have a chat history with this person. It's a friend and a former colleague. |
| 0:59.0 | There was the video of him. The video was weird because it's not like it's obviously not a |
| 1:03.4 | live feed. And you mentioned that they're not deep fakes. They're actually recorded videos. |
| 1:07.6 | It's also really freaking freaking terrifying. And the whole thing had a weird feel |
| 1:12.3 | about it, but I was up super early. I was also taking care of my daughter at the time. And so I just, |
| 1:18.8 | there were so many inputs I wasn't thinking about. And it just goes to show how freaking crazy |
| 1:23.5 | some of these fishing attacks have come. And this one is by far the most sophisticated I've ever |
| 1:27.4 | seen. Welcome back to the BlockspacePod brought to you by CleanSpark. The North Korean |
| 1:34.0 | hacking syndicate Lazarus Group has stolen more than $300 million in crypto in the last year alone |
| 1:40.8 | using a highly sophisticated fishing attack that targets users telegram accounts. |
| 1:46.1 | I was personally victimized by this fishing attack in December. |
| 1:50.9 | I didn't lose any coins as a result, but I did lose access to my nearly 10-year-old telegram |
| 1:56.5 | account as a result. |
| 1:57.7 | To diagnose this problem and explain how users can shield themselves against it, |
... |
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