The Dark Night Online

The Dark Night Online | U.S. Government crypto wallets hacked for $20M — as reported by Arkham Intelligence and Cointelegraph “A hacker compromised a wallet probably controlled by the United States government on Oct. 24. The wallet, which included funds seized from the 2016 Bitfinex hack, was drained of $20 million. According to Arkham Intelligence, the attacker sent the funds to a wallet beginning with “0x348,” which included USD Coin The onchain analytics firm said the hacker has started converting the stablecoins into ETH and laundering the funds through addresses likely associated with a money-laundering service. The attacker exploited funds seized by the US government in the 2016 Bitfinex hack, whose perpetrators — Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan — face sentencing in November.” SOURCE: https://lnkd.in/gTN7cJZn

The Dark Night Online | BILLIONS OF WESTERN DOLLARS have been stolen by North Korea - here's a well-produced reminder by Drew Binsky about the dangers of the hermit nation and how he almost lost his freedom and his life. https://lnkd.in/dC9ns-WS

The Dark Night Online | NATIONAL SECURITY implications from AML CTF and WAR FUNDING - CONFIRMED: NORTH KOREA has BOOTS ON THE GROUND in RUSSIA and UKRAINE - my research into the global financial crime victim experience has led to a much deeper understanding of how war at a grand scale can only happen with stolen funding as a global pandemic. No one wants to admit publicly that we are already experiencing a global cyber and financial war, with state sponsored threats against civilian actors directly besieging western civilian societies. State sponsored financial terrorism through decentralised criminals for hire has been a mechanism for the wealth of the west to be spirited away to Eastern Europe, Asia and North Korea. Proven facts and widely known, but rarely talked about. State sponsored financial terrorism against western civilians makes justice narratives like caveat emptor (buyer beware) null and void against the backdrop of a level of sophistication that has successfully hacked law enforcement and military. The ‘she’ll be right mate’ attitude has to stop. We are not nearly vigilant enough against the contextual background of state sponsored threats against civilian populations. We need to be more aware. I previously published that stolen Western funds are being used by North Korea, reporting that there might be boots on the ground. It turns out Ukraine intelligence was correct. The canary (Ukraine) in the coal mine (Eastern Europe) is attempting to warn the coal miners (Western Democracy) that danger (coalition against the West) looms ahead. My research also uncovered that China has been evading arms trade limitations on the export of military hardware by supplying semi automatic rifles intended for law enforcement, now in use by Russian military. China is very much behind undermining the west. Xi Jinping is on public record backing Putin over disrupting western versions of international law. On the day that the international court issued an arrest warrant for Putin, Xi Jinping visited Putin in person face to face to put on a show of solidarity as a forever friend. That is the single moment in history that western politicians should have understood that China would use trade revenue to build up military power to the extent this could undermine western influence. We only take conflict seriously once several territories are taken and Taiwan is considered the trigger territory for war in the Asia Pacific theatre. While North Korea is now actively supporting Russia against Ukraine, China’s involvement is covert and deceptive. The truth is that consumers want cheap Chinese goods and are prepared to accept funding the China economy, even if that money is eventually used to undermine our own democracy. This is why our governments are evaluating tariffs on Chinese cars and why and how this is linked to national security. https://lnkd.in/dDG8Rs23

The Dark Night Online | "Nigeria drops money laundering charges against Binance executive Gambaryan - The hearing, coming two days before the 25 October earlier scheduled as the return date by the trial judge in the open court last Friday, appeared to have been intentionally held to avoid public attention as much as possible." "The Nigerian government has dropped all charges against Tigran Gambaryan, an executive at Binance Holdings, who has been facing money laundering trial from detention since April." "A lawyer representing the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) – the prosecuting agency – announced the withdrawal of the charges at the Federal High Court in Abuja Wednesday morning. The hearing, coming two days before the 25 October earlier scheduled as the return date by the trial judge in the open court last Friday, appeared to have been intentionally held to avoid public attention as much as possible. Announcing the withdrawal of the charges, the lawyer said Mr Gambaryan, a United States citizen, was merely an employee of Binance, whose activities he was being prosecuted for." "Mark Mordi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) representing Mr Gambaryan, agreed with the prosecution, saying that his client was not involved in the company’s broader financial decisions. PREMIUM TIMES understands that Wednesday’s hearing was a climax of the behind-the-scenes diplomatic lobbying that had been ongoing between Nigerian and the US government figures for months for the release of Mr Gambaryan, who has been denied bail on two occasions because the judge considered him to be a flight risk. Weeks to Wednesday’s hearing have been marked by campaigns by some US lawmakers for the release of Mr Gambaryan, including writing relevant Nigerian and American authorities to intervene." "The judge, Emeka Nwite, rejected his second bail application on 11 October, ruling that Mr Gambaryan’s grounds of ill health were not sufficient to release him from detention. The judge then fixed 18 October for continuation for trial but Mr Gambaryan was surprisingly absent." Continued at link: https://lnkd.in/gjqDNcxQ

The Dark Night Online | SYNTHETIC CONTENT DETECTION - this work by Hany Farid a professor at UC Berkeley reads as very promising in the battle to determine real from fake in the AI LLM age of deception.

The Dark Night Online | PROTECTING CHILDREN… Penny Tyler works with a team of people working at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) to stop child sexual abuse online. In the attached post Penny is sharing the understanding that the Large Language Learning model (AI) that creates synthetic or deep fake child sex material can only be trained on real materials is a grim reality. We must put a stop to this. I encourage my audience to follow and support Penny and the team at the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) by liking, following and sharing Penny’s posts. If you have thought about philanthropy, the IWF is a very worthy organisation to support. I encourage contacting Penny directly to learn how you can get involved.

The Dark Night Online | ASSET FORFEITURE - I encourage my audience to follow the work and learn about the courses, certifications and the hands-on world class leading practical training for Asset Forfeiture through Asset Reality. In my opinion every lawyer, law enforcement officer, court officer, investigator and financial forensic expert should take a look at the software platform, tools and methods being introduced globally by Aidan Larkin This is a fundamentally important engine that connects to other case elements to further improve, enhance and accelerate financial restitution. I am formally recommending Asset Reality in reports. https://lnkd.in/d9RBqTFy

The Dark Night Online | MONEY & WAR: FINANCIAL TERRORISM and the FUNDING of AUTHORATORIAN CONFLICTS with YOUR STOLEN FUNDS. If you lost crypto in a foreign scam your funds might be used by NORTH KOREA to provide troops to assist RUSSIA to rally the fight in UKRAINE. FACT: North Korea has successfully stolen billions of Western consumer funds through cryptocurrency and other financial terrorism scams. They will most assuredly use these funds to deliver the Authoritarian Agendas of Russia, China, Iran through new logistics and support supply agreements. POSSIBLE: NORTH KOREA IN UKRAINE? If footage shared with CNN released by Ukrainian Centre for Strategic Communication and Information Security is true, then funds stolen from Western consumers may be used to send North Korean troops to the front lines of Russia's battle against Ukraine. This is part of the global synchronisation of Authoritarian regimes whose aim is to take the wealth of democratic Western nations by any means. FINANCIAL WARFARE and FINANCIAL TERRORISM. It is important to understand just how important funds flow is to war. The Spanish empire lost critically important supply ships carrying funds for war. Spain defaulted on war loans and could no longer afford to sustain the empire. The once great empire fell down the ranks of influence from the world's greatest imperialist power in 1700 to now ranking 28th among the 133 economies featured in the GII 2024. At the centre of every conflict is a sense of entitlement to reclaim or seize surrounding territories. In the case of China, there is Taiwan. In the case of North Korea, there is South Korea. In the case of Iran, there is Israel. In the case of Russia, there is Ukraine. The lesson here for authoritarianism is do not put your funds flow at risk. Establish a logistics supply chain and a network within which resources can flow to support your regional objectives. Networks like BRICS. We must come to a sense that in a globalised, connected and online world, decentralised threat actors will take the path of least resistance to penetrate networks and gain access to resources that fortify supply chains. It is a fact that foreign states hire decentralised criminals to hack into corporate and government networks through ancillary connections. Those 'average people' who are taught they are not at risk are often most at risk. It is a fact that money pays for war. China, North Korea, Russia and Iran have been stealing western wealth for several years now. The cost of financial terrorism has been paid by Western consumers. The burden for this financial warfare to pay for Authoritarian logistics has been put on local law enforcement. Yet no one has ever challenged China on the single DNS provider SHANGHAI MEICHEN that churns out Shanghai based financial crime websites like Whack-a-Mole. Why? https://lnkd.in/g8SDzxtp

The Dark Night Online | HOW LONG IS A SECURE PASSWORD? HOW LONG BEFORE QUANTUM COMPUTING CAN HACK MILITARY GRADE PASSWORDS? What is the U.S. government doing about cryptography and encryption in the post quantum era? ALREADY CRACKED: A Chinese University research team has already cracked a military grade password using QUANTUM computing. (See my earlier post with details.) ALREADY PREPARED: Don’t panic too much! A relatively unknown (to the public) American organisation already has the solution to quantum hacks and breaches. My main warning is this: BRUTE FORCE HACK CHARTS ARE NOW WRONG. I have seen the Australian intelligence community post a (now out of date) chart that demonstrates how a long password consisting of 14 characters could take centuries to crack. FALSE. It was previously thought that it would be years before military grade passwords could be cracked, but the evidence is now out there that this has already happened. CRYPTOGRAPHY IN THE POST QUANTUM ERA So just what are the NEW military grade password requirements? First let’s look at the current requirements. The USA Departmemt of Defence mandates a 14/15 character password, and brute force chartsstate these are safe. That would be true of the past. However the organisation that researches and then mandates cryptography standards is called the NIST. NATIONAL INSTITUTE of STANDARDS and TECHNOLOGY (NIST). The cryptography program is called NIST CSRC (Computer Security Resource Centre) NIST often sets the standards deployed across USA systems and typically you will see a standards label like this: NIST SP 800-171 REQUIREMENTS Which is the 14 character minimum requirement standard. POST QUANTUM CRYPTOGRAPHY NIST predicted the advent of this weeks quantum AI military password crack by a Chinese university more than five years ago. NIST has already released guidelines for USA cryptographic defence against hacks and breaches in the post quantum era. Eg. (In my own words) The gate is open and the horse has already bolted, so here’s our solution, says NIST. Although this NIST press release is more about digital signatures, the fundamentals of secure encryption across public networks evolving in the post quantum computing era is the salient point here. FIPS 203 specifies a cryptographic scheme called the Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism Standard, which is derived from the CRYSTALS-KYBER submission. Which brings us to… RATE OF CHANGE Was previously established as an empirical evidence thought analysis model by MOORES LAW, which stated that the number of transistors on a circuit board would double every two years. Quantum computing was expected to advance relatively slowly due to this complication, but no one factored in AI as an accelerator. And thus yesterday I shared a paper that reported a Chinese quantum project had hacked military grade passwords. https://lnkd.in/epxxeJHb

The Dark Night Online | QUANTUM HACK - Researchers at a Chinese University have released a research paper that cites a successful hack of base level short MILITARY GRADE ENCRYPTION. Source: FUTURISM / THE BYTE (verbatim article text below) https://lnkd.in/gRfHa2Cc “Chinese researchers at Shanghai University say they've inched towards cracking military-grade encryption — with the help of a quantum computer. In a Chinese-language paper published late last month in the Chinese Journal of Computers, the researchers claim they were able to use one of D-Wave's off-the-shelf quantum computers to attack Substitution-Permutation Networks (SPNs), classical cryptography algorithms employed in widely-used encryption standards. As Tom's Hardware reports, the paper delineates two distinct methodologies, both rooted in D-Wave's quantum annealing algorithm. SPNs are used in algorithms tasked with protecting sensitive institutions including militaries and banks — meaning that, if the researcher's claims are true, their findings could force institutions to revisit their cybersecurity measures. Experts have long warned that quantum computers, which work in a fundamentally different way than conventional ones, could soon break encryption standards that keep highly classified information from the prying eyes of hackers. The latest research suggests the tech is making strides towards such an eventuality. According to the hackers' paper, their findings represent "the first time that a real quantum computer has posed a real and substantial threat to multiple full-scale SPN structured algorithms in use today," as quoted by The South China Morning Post. Off the Shelf As The Register notes, details of the hackers' techniques remain pretty murky. The quantum-aided attacks were also implemented against a much shorter encryption key than is usually used in the real world, meaning that the alleged findings are, at best, a promising though still theoretical start to cracking these algorithms out in the wild. Even so, that the researchers' reported success didn't hinge on military- or law enforcement-protected technologies is meaningful. D-Wave, which was founded in Canada, is a private-sector company and its goods are available to retail buyers. As The Register's Laura Dobberstein writes, the "mere fact that an off-the-shelf one quantum system has been used to develop a viable angle of attack on classical encryption will advance debate about the need to revisit the way data is protected." All in all, though the paper comes with a heavy grain of salt, its findings may warrant a pulse check on the efficacy of modern encryption standards — not to mention fuel efforts to devise the cryptography standards of the future.” RESEARCH PAPER https://lnkd.in/g9kBqnY6