North Korean hackers stole $400 million using deepfake video calls and fake meetings

The FBI and Department of Justice revealed that North Korean state-backed hackers, using a scheme called FaceStealer, have stolen over $400 million in cryptocurrency in the past 18 months through sophisticated social engineering. The campaign used compromised accounts to invite targets to video meetings, secretly recorded their video streams, and played prerecorded or deepfake videos of people the targets knew to build trust.

In a coordinated action, U.S. authorities seized the cloud infrastructure used in the campaign and restrained over $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency stolen in a separate but related hack of Binance. The stolen funds are funneled into North Korea's illicit weapons programs, making this a critical national security and cybersecurity issue. The scheme highlights a dangerous new frontier in cybercrime where AI-generated deepfakes are weaponized to enable massive financial theft.