AI Firm ORO Loses $600K in Smart North Korean Phishing Attack

Artificial intelligence shopping agent developer ORO lost $630,000 in cryptocurrency after falling victim to a clever social engineering scheme. According to the company, a staff member communicated with a contact met at a conference, whose Telegram account was later compromised by state backed actors. The attacker reached out for a catch up call and sent a link mimicking Microsoft Teams.

When the initial call failed due to audio issues, the staff member received a prompt to update Microsoft Teams. This update actually installed a malicious extension that recorded keyboard inputs, took screenshots, and swapped crypto addresses. The attacker quietly watched the system for nearly a month before draining 147,000 Alpha tokens from the company wallets on July 13.

ORO blamed the severity of the breach partly on its own setup, noting that a lack of hardware wallet support on Bittensor forced them to use a software wallet for the owner key. The firm is now working with law enforcement and crypto exchanges to recover the funds. They also confirmed that their subnet remains fully operational and validator keys stored on hardware wallets stayed safe.