💼 Fake job offer from North Korea

💼 Crypto Job Offer on LinkedIn Turns Into $37 Million Hack

If you received a job offer on LinkedIn that sounds too good to be true, you might want to think twice before you click on it. It could be a trap.

That’s what happened to a programmer at CoinsPaid, the world’s biggest crypto payment provider. He got a message from someone claiming to be a recruiter, offering him a lucrative position. The message came with a file to download, which he did.

Big mistake.

He unwittingly opened the door for hackers who stole US$37mil from the company in less than five hours.

The hackers may be Lazarus, a North Korean hacking group connected to the North Korean government. They have been targeting crypto companies more and more since they are easier to hack than banks or governments.

Global losses related to crypto theft rose to a record US$3.8bil in 2022. Social engineering remains a major vulnerability in the cryptocurrency sector.

🏢 From $47 Billion Valuation to Potential Bankruptcy

Remember WeWork, the company that wanted to revolutionize office space?

Well, it turns out that renting desks and couches is not a very profitable business, especially when a pandemic hits and everyone works from home.

WeWork once valued at $47 billion is now warning that it might go bankrupt, after losing a ton of money and customers. It also has a lot of debt and not much cash. Its stock has been trading below $1 and now has a market cap below $500 million.

The company has been in trouble for a long time, ever since its founder Adam Neumann got kicked out for being shady and spending too much. Even SoftBank, its biggest investor, regrets backing it. They lost billions on their investment.

WeWork is now looking for ways to survive, like cutting costs, raising money, or selling assets. It also needs a new CEO and a new board.

🧩 CAPTCHAs are Getting Weirder as AI Gets Smarter

CAPTCHAs have gotten increasingly harder and weirder as AI has gotten smarter.

Captcha stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. It was invented by Luis von Ahn, who is also the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo. They are designed to be easy for humans but hard for bots to solve.

However, as AI gets smarter, Captchas get weirder. AI can now read distorted text, identify images and audio, and even generate its own Captchas. Some of these Captchas are so weird that they ask users to recognize things that don’t exist, like a snail-yoyo hybrid called a “Yoko”.

The future of Captchas might depend on how well AI can mimic human behavior, such as browser history or mouse movement. But there is always a risk of privacy invasion or security breach.

Maybe one day, we will need a new way to prove that we are not robots.

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