Digital Wallet
By James Thorp
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A Trail Across Crypto's Biggest Names. The GitHub username "imyugioh" connected the developer directly to MetaMask's codebase.
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This Pattern Keeps Repeating. Knapp's case isn't isolated. Before him, another North Korean operative surfaced in the space —…
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What Consensys Says It Did Right. To be fair, once the identification came through, Consensys moved fast.
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A suspected North Korean operative worked inside MetaMask's core wallet code for roughly a month before getting caught.
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Consensys, the parent company behind MetaMask, said Knapp was brought in through a reputable third-party service provider.
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The GitHub username "imyugioh" connected the developer directly to MetaMask's codebase. But MetaMask wasn't close to his only stop.
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Zun was blunt about it. He criticized MetaMask and Consensys for not running a thorough background check, saying that kind of basic vetting could have stopped the hire before it…
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Consensys pushed back on the severity, at least in terms of damage. After terminating Knapp's access, the company ran an internal investigation.
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Knapp's case isn't isolated. Before him, another North Korean operative surfaced in the space — someone identified first as "Moo" and later revealed as Keisuke Watanabe.
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Read also: North Korea-Linked Contractor Had MetaMask Code Access for Over a Month
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The crypto industry runs heavily on remote work and pseudonymous contributors. That's kind of baked into its culture — open-source development, GitHub handles, no one necessarily…
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And the Security Alliance's database, as useful as it is, can only do so much if companies aren't actively checking it before every hire. Knapp was flagged in September 2025.
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To be fair, once the identification came through, Consensys moved fast. Access terminated, investigation launched, results published.
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Zun's criticism didn't really soften after the investigation results came out. The analyst's position is pretty straightforward: if the database exists and the name is on it, you…
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Read also: Bank of Korea Adds 2 Regional Banks to CBDC Pilot as Tokenized Deposits Enter Testing
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