North Korea’s crypto nukes and this week’s top stories
It may surprise you to learn that North Korean hackers were responsible for a third of this theft – $1 billion – according to Chainalysis, far surpassing the $400 million they stole across seven cyber attacks on crypto exchanges in 2021.
But why is North Korea, of all places, diving into digital assets?
It all boils down to choice – the lack of it.
Wild fluctuations in the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies make them a poor store of value and a terrible medium of exchange.
But what if you have few choices, like El Salvador? The country had long abandoned its own fiat currency – the colón – and legally adopted the US dollar before it decided to give bitcoin the same status last year. Here’s how that experiment goes, by the way. (TL;DR: not good.)
And what about North Korea, a brutal dictatorship run by a crime family that threatens the world with nuclear armageddon while starving its own people for decades?
Years of crippling economic sanctions and pressure from neighboring governments (mainly China) have forced North Korea to come up with creative ways to circumvent these economic penalties.
Of the most successful of these have been – you guessed it – crypto hacks.
North Korean hackers have sent about $52.46 million worth of crypto to exchanges in South Korea since 2019 in an attempt to avoid sanctions or launder money, according to the Chainalysis report, which also caught the attention of South Korean lawmaker Yoon Han-hong this week .
Chainalysis, which has been working with the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Europol to track criminal use of crypto, said it arrived at the figure by tracking several intermediate deposit addresses that have been exposed to crypto wallets owned by North Korean hackers.
So what does the poor, pariah nation with a GDP of just $18 billion in 2019 do with its newfound crypto riches?
Building a nuclear arsenal, of course.
Reuters reported in February, citing an excerpt of a confidential UN report, that “cyber attacks, particularly on cryptocurrency assets, remain an important source of revenue” for North Korea, and that independent sanctions monitors said they had received information that North Korean hackers continued to target financial institutions, crypto firms and exchanges.
Crypto may be in a crippling bear market, but – as the latest numbers show – that hasn’t dampened North Korea’s crypto ambitions, as it directly funds the one thing that keeps the Kim family in power.
Written by Zaheer Merchant in Mumbai
IT revenue calculation
All IT services majors except Tech Mahindra announced their Q2 FY23 results this week. While most reported flat growth numbers in Q2, they all pointed to changes they saw in the sector due to macroeconomic headwinds and fears of an impending recession in developed countries.
Mindtree recorded the best Q2 profit figures with 27% year-on-year growth, while Wipro recorded a 9% decline in its annual profit.
Interestingly, moonlighting was a topic of discussion in our conversations with several CXOs. They agreed that the new phenomenon did indeed pose a challenge, and most called it “unethical”.
Here are some of the top stories from this week’s IT earnings:
Wipro CEO Delaporte is ‘cautiously optimistic’, citing robust deal-winners, strong pipeline
Infosys is not for moonlighting, says CEO Salil Parekh
70% of TCS employees receive full variable pay in the 2nd quarter
More redundancies at Edtechs
The edtech sector was back in the news this week with two major players – Byju’s and FrontRow – announcing mass layoffs as they try to restructure their operations and achieve profitability.
Byju said it would lay off 5% of its 50,000-strong workforce — roughly 2,500 employees — in what will be one of the biggest rounds of layoffs by any Indian startup. FrontRow said it laid off 130 employees (almost 75% of its workforce), across marketing, sales, engineering and product, in what was the second round of layoffs this year.
Meanwhile, Vendantu, another troubled edtech startup, acquired Deeksha – a test preparation platform for board and competitive exams – for $40 million.
The subsequent layoffs in the edtech sector reflect the overall decline in the Indian startup ecosystem. Recently, we reported that late-stage startups like Udaan and PharmEasy are turning to debt instruments like convertible notes to overcome the financial whiplash. Convertible notes are converted to equity at a later stage and require no valuation to be attributed to the start-up.
Here are the important edtech stories from this week:
Byju will lay off up to 2,500 employees in a “rationalisation” bid
FrontRow fires 130 employees in second layoff exercise
AN e-commerce index
We have launched three indices – ET Ecommerce, ET Ecommerce Profitable and ET Ecommerce Non-Profitable – to track the performance of newly listed technology firms. Here’s how they’ve fared so far.
Summary of technical guidelines
The Personal Data Protection Bill (PDP) has been around for quite some time now, after the government scrapped the previous version earlier this year.
In an exclusive interview, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, told us the revised version of the (PDP Bill is likely to include relaxed provisions on data localization and cross-border flow of data. This could bring relief to Big Tech and other firms who had serious concerns about the previous version.
Some major tech firms like Google are also facing scrutiny from the Indian government and its various agencies. India’s competition watchdog has clubbed complaints from several news organizations alleging that Google has abused its dominant position in the space.
Here are the biggest tech policy stories this week:
The revised personal data bill may relax the rules for data localization
CCI clubs news publishers’ complaints against Google, orders new investigation
Consumer internet firms seek clarity from government on new telecoms
Cab aggregators clash with the K’taka government
The Karnataka High Court, in an interim order on Friday, capped the convenience fee charged by app-based aggregators such as Ola, Uber and Rapido for autorickshaw services in Bengaluru to 10% of the fare.
This is exclusive of the goods and services tax (GST) which must be charged on the total price, as before.
The court order comes after a week of legal wrangling between app-based ride-hailing providers and the Karnataka government after the latter ordered an inquiry into their high fares and ordered them to stop their services – calling them “illegal” – within three days of the letter.
However, the ride-hailing apps refused to stop their services and Ola and Uber instead moved the Supreme Court to challenge the state transport department’s notice. Both companies have a license issued under the Karnataka On-Demand Transportation Technology Aggregators Rules, 2016.
Here are the developments from the ongoing legal battle:
In Bengaluru, apps must limit the tax to 10% of the car price
Karnataka HC asks state government to hold talks with Uber and Ola to resolve car fare issue
Ola, Uber, Rapido are unlikely to stop car services in Bengaluru despite notice from the state
In other news
Amazon sues consumer protection agency for fine: Amazon has filed a case against the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) in the Delhi High Court challenging an order that found the e-commerce platform in violation of mandatory standards with regard to the sale of pressure cookers
IT firms could cut campus hiring in half this year: Campuses popular with IT services companies looking to hire engineers are likely to see the number of offers for the class of 2023 drop by as much as half, a new study from staffing firm Xpheno suggests.
Brands cower as social media bullies run riot: Brand strategists and lawyers have seen an increase in requests to review content as boycotts of films and brands gain traction on social media. Brands ask creatives and marketers to stay away from religion, politics or anything else that has the potential to offend.
