AI developer ORO discloses that North Korean hackers stole $630,000 worth of cryptocurrency

PANews July 22 report: According to Protos, AI shopping agent developer ORO disclosed losses of about $630k due to a suspected North Korean hacker attack. The attacker sent ORO employees a fake Microsoft Teams link via a compromised Telegram account, luring them to install a malicious extension. After nearly a month of stealing data, the attacker stole 147k Alpha tokens on July 13. ORO is highly confident that the attack came from the North Korean hacker group Sapphire Sleet.

ORO also admitted security oversights: due to the Bittensor protocol’s insufficient support for hardware wallets, the company “temporarily” set owners’ keys to software wallets, violating internal principles that prioritize hardware wallets. As a result, the keys were stolen from compromised computers. ORO said it is working with exchanges, law enforcement, and partners in the Bittensor ecosystem to recover the stolen assets, and emphasized that its subnet is running normally, with no impact on other wallets, user data, or validator signing keys.