Cyber

U.S. prosecutors have charged two men based in the Republic of Georgia with running AudiA6, a cryptocurrency money laundering service alleged to have processed more than $389 million, following a coordinated international takedown of the operation’s infrastructure.

The U.S. Treasury Department on Tuesday sanctioned Nobitex, Iran’s largest digital asset exchange, accusing the platform of helping Tehran evade sanctions and facilitate terrorist financing and ransomware attacks. 

Mainstream cryptocurrency companies including Kraken, Gemini, and Cumberland DRW transferred billions of dollars in bitcoin to ATM operators that authorities have repeatedly accused of facilitating scams targeting elderly and vulnerable Americans.

Company directors connected to Cambodia’s Prince Group, which the United States has designated a transnational criminal organization, have acquired millions of dollars in luxury Tokyo real estate.

Russian intelligence-linked hackers who penetrated the U.S. Treasury Department in the 2020 SolarWinds cyberattack gained the ability to access email accounts across the entire agency, including staff working on sanctions and financial-crime investigations.

Small towns, school districts, and utilities across the United States lack the staffing and basic cyberdefenses needed to fend off a new generation of AI-enabled hacking threats even as larger institutions scramble to shore up their systems.

Hackers widely believed to be linked to North Korea appear to have used artificial intelligence to pull off two crypto heists in April that netted nearly $600 million. That more can be on the way is rattling the $130-billion decentralized finance sector.

The chief executive of Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said the regulator will no longer be able to defend against every illicit-finance threat equally and must openly prioritize what it focuses on as technology-linked scams continue to rise. 

A new report from a U.S. think tank says industrial-scale cyber-fraud operations embedded in Southeast Asia’s special economic zones now generate an estimated $50 billion to $75 billion per year, and should be considered a hybrid security threat rather than a consumer-protection issue.

Artificial intelligence is amplifying the cyber threats facing the global financial system and could trigger a system-wide shock unless regulators and banks build stronger defenses, the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday.