Oh my God, I just saw a crazy news story from South Korea. The Korean Ministry of Finance released a press release about the seizure of taxpayers’ assets, but the problem is that they included a clear picture showing a Ledger wallet and the recovery phrase (the mnemonic) written by hand! I mean, with no masking at all, and not even any attempt to hide it.

Of course, it didn’t take long—someone used that phrase and stole about $4.8 million worth of digital assets from the wallet. Blockchain data shows that 4 million PRTG tokens were transferred to an unknown address on the same day.

What’s both funny and heartbreaking at the same time is that this is a government institution with people who are supposed to have basic security standards. Leaking the mnemonic is one of the simplest security mistakes that can happen. Security experts heavily criticized them because they didn’t even understand the basic principles of protecting digital assets. A national loss by any standard.