North Korean hacker Park Jin Hyok, on the FBI's wanted list.
Believed to have been born in either 1981 or 1984.
A North Korean national who speaks Korean, English, and Chinese.
The cases in which the U.S. Department of Justice has alleged his involvement include:
β The 2014 Sony Pictures hack
β‘ The theft of $81 million from Bangladesh's central bank in 2016
β’ The 2017 WannaCry ransomware attack that crippled systems worldwideHe has been linked to a group tied to North Korea's Reconnaissance General Bureau and was charged in the United States in 2018.
The FBI has publicly released his real name and photo and is actively seeking him, but bringing him into custody is considered difficult, as he was last known to be in North Korea.
β» These incidents are allegations made by U.S. authorities, and his involvement in all of them has not been definitively confirmed.
He has not been officially named in the Binance case; this is background only.
The Binance hacker might have just executed one of the most brilliant moves in crypto.
First, Tether froze $1.5 billion worth of USDT.
Then Circle followed by freezing another $800 million in USDC.
At that point, it seemed like the hackerβs funds were completely trapped.
But apparently, he had already thought several steps ahead.
Rather than keeping the stolen USDT in a wallet, he allegedly deposited it into Aave and used it as collateral to borrow ETH.
Then he walked away.
And this is where things get really interesting.
Tether can freeze the USDT sitting in that wallet.
But it canβt freeze the ETH that was already borrowed.
So now, Aave is left with frozen collateral, while the hacker is holding liquid ETH.
And unless the protocol finds a way to recover those funds, he might not even have to repay the loan.
Two companies froze billions of dollars in seconds.
Yet someone who understood how DeFi works may have found a way to bypass both restrictions.
Pretty wild when you think about it.