South Korean Police Lose Seized Crypto By Posting Password Online
- Reference: 0180881954
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/03/02/0424251/south-korean-police-lose-seized-crypto-by-posting-password-online
- Source link:
> South Korea's National Tax Service seized crypto assets during recent enforcement actions against 124 high-value tax evaders, but now, a large chunk of that crypto cash has been lost. The operation originally resulted in the confiscation of crypto holdings worth about 8.1 billion won, or roughly $5.6 million. However, officials later issued a [3]press release to showcase these efforts in recovering delinquent taxes, and the release included photographs of Ledger hardware wallets taken into custody along with handwritten notes that displayed the wallet seed phrases.
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> Those images attached to the press release turned out to be the critical error. High-resolution photos clearly showed the mnemonic recovery phrases, which serve as the master key for accessing the wallets. This exposure eliminated any protection provided by the offline cold storage on the Ledger devices. Possession of the seed phrase allows complete control, and anyone who knows the phrase can import it into software or another hardware wallet and initiate transfers without the original device.
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> In this case, an unknown individual who saw the photos published by law enforcement first added a small amount of ether to one of the addresses to cover Ethereum network gas fees necessary for outbound transactions. From there, they executed three transfers to move approximately 4 million Pre-Retogeum, or PRTG, tokens. At the time, those tokens carried a value of $4.8 million, but [4]reporting from The Block indicates liquidating that much value from the holdings would have proven difficult due to market dynamics.
[1] https://gizmodo.com/south-korean-police-lose-seized-crypto-by-posting-password-online-2000728191
[2] https://www.mk.co.kr/news/stock/11974731
[3] https://in.nts.go.kr/incheonnts/na/ntt/selectNttList.do?mi=9230&bbsId=1028
[4] https://www.theblock.co/post/391578/south-korea-tax-service-reveals-crypto-wallet-recovery-phrase-report
This is why... (Score:3)
...you really should NOT have stupid people running, or being in, police forces ANYWHERE.
Indeed, it's why society really really cannot afford crass stupidity in its population.
Since the majority of a person's intelligence comes from environmental factors, not genetics, this is a societal/cultural issue in all nations. You can't fix it by "not letting stupid people breed", you have to fix it through not letting people become stupid. And that's going to be a hard one to solve. Even though it's essentially a choice by society.
In the meantime, criminals will simply impound the money seized from other criminals (and the money held by governments and officials), because computers and cryptographic protections don't care about the colour of your hat.
Re: (Score:2)
> You can't fix it by "not letting stupid people breed", you have to fix it through not letting people become stupid
This sentence seems to be somewhat self contradictory. Despite decades of trying to make it not so, it seems that intelligence remains primarily inherited from parents/ancestors.
Socioeconomic status, education, opportunities, etc all have no ability to improve iq. Nutrition only matters in the sense of malnutrition. So environmental factors can reduce IQ, but they cant do anything to raise
Moore-Ons Law. (Score:2)
>> ...you really should NOT have stupid people running, or being in, police forces ANYWHERE.
> Indeed, it's why society really really cannot afford crass stupidity in its population.
> Since the majority of a person's intelligence comes from environmental factors, not genetics, this is a societal/cultural issue in all nations. You can't fix it by "not letting stupid people breed", you have to fix it through not letting people become stupid. And that's going to be a hard one to solve. Even though it's essentially a choice by society.
The choice to grow a child instead of raising one, is indeed a choice. One being made by grown-ass child parents now. And it shows. When the average 30-year old can recognize the cultural difference in measured maturity between themselves and the newly minted grown-ass "adult" at 18, the concept of Moore-Ons Law comes into play. We are now breeding mass ignorance at a rate faster than a single generation.
We can fix it by understanding humans are born stupid. About everything. It is up to Wisdom and Inte
Re: (Score:2)
They don't become cops because they want to be computer experts, they become cops because they want to push people around and pretend to be heroes.
National Enquirer? (Score:2)
This piece is kind of the nerd equivalent to the cover stories on the rags at supermarket checkouts.