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Hackers stole billions in crypto to keep North Korea’s regime afloat

(www.wsj.com)
125 points Bostonian | 3 comments | 03 Apr 25 13:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.64s | source
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ForHackernews ◴[03 Apr 25 14:30 UTC] No.43570239[source]▶
Kim Jong Un's keys: Kim Jong Un's coins.

Blockchain is a perfect, transparent trustless global ledger that can't be hacked, so it's a misnomer to characterise these transactions as "cheating", "crimes" or "theft".

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cvoss ◴[03 Apr 25 14:51 UTC] No.43570603[source]▶
If you unlawfully or immorally gain access to information, such as my private keys, and then use that information to move money, you have absolutely committed a crime, cheated, and/or stolen from me.

If you deceive me into executing a transaction voluntarily by misrepresenting the destination (which is immoral and often illegal), you have absolutely committed a crime, cheated, and/or stolen from me.

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1. rchaud ◴[03 Apr 25 15:25 UTC] No.43571112[source]▶
What NK hackers are alleged to have done here is fraud, something that the US head of state has been convicted of, by courts in his own country. NK on the other hand, has not been tried nor convicted.

What possible legitimacy does the US even have to mark others as "thieves"?

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2. cvoss ◴[03 Apr 25 19:26 UTC] No.43574248[source]▶
Theft is first a moral concept, and only secondly a legal one, so there is no need to invoke the legitimacy of nation states' authority to have a meaningful discussion about theft.
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3. rchaud ◴[03 Apr 25 22:53 UTC] No.43576438[source]▶
Theft is a moral concept, but the legitimacy of a justice department to comment on it rests on its record of enforcing the legal limits consistently in its own remit. That is openly not the case anymore, voiding the legitimacy it may otherwise have held.