Pepe's Price Surges 4.265% Amid North Korean Hacker Attacks

Pepe's latest price was $0.05, up 4.265% in the last 24 hours. In recent developments, several cryptocurrency projects associated with Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe the Frog, were targeted by North Korean hackers. These attacks resulted in significant losses, with over $1 million stolen from various projects. The hackers exploited vulnerabilities in smart contracts, allowing them to mint and sell NFTs, which subsequently caused the value of these assets to plummet to zero. The compromised projects included Replicandy, Peplicator, Hedz, and Zogz on the ChainSaw platform, as well as the Favrr project. On-chain detective ZachXBT has linked these attacks to North Korean developers hired through freelance platforms, noting regular payments to such "employees" from third-party crypto projects.

In another cybersecurity incident, a new trojan known as SparkKitty has been identified. This malware is distributed through fake app store websites and disguises itself as cryptocurrency applications and modified versions of TikTok. Once installed, SparkKitty requests access to the photo gallery, tracks changes, and uploads stolen images to a remote server. The primary objective of this trojan is to find screenshots of cryptocurrency wallet seed phrases, with a particular focus on residents of China and Southeast Asia. This development highlights the growing threat of cybercrime in the cryptocurrency space, as hackers continue to find new ways to exploit vulnerabilities and steal valuable information.

In a separate but related development, the hacker known as IntelBroker and several operators of BreachForums were arrested in France. The U.S. Justice Department filed charges against 25-year-old British citizen Kai West, known by his hacker alias IntelBroker, and announced his arrest in February 2025. U.S. authorities are seeking his extradition on charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and electronic fraud. Law enforcement identified West’s accounts on the Ramp platform and Coinbase, and found scans of personal documents in the linked email. Additionally, four operators of BreachForums v2 were arrested in France, including ShinyHunters, who served as administrator of the hacker forum after Pompompurin’s capture. IntelBroker was also listed among those running the site after its relaunch. These arrests underscore the ongoing efforts by law enforcement agencies to combat cybercrime and bring hackers to justice.