North Korean Hackers Stole Hundreds of Millions in Crypto Last Year
And they're still going.
North Korean hackers stole over $400 million worth of crypto in 2021, bringing their total to $1.5 billion in the last five years. A confidential United Nations report stated that the hackers, a group known as Lazarus, were working together with the North Korean government to fund weapons and keep the economy afloat.
How did they do it?
According to Chainalysis, a firm that tracks cryptocurrency, the hackers targeted primarily investment firms and centralized exchanges. They used a variety of methods such as phishing, malware and social engineering to gain access to online crypto wallets and transfer their funds into separate accounts. Once this transfer is complete, the victim’s crypto is gone forever.
Because North Korea is already heavily sanctioned by the US and allied nations, and the fact they’d never extradiate one of their hackers, they won’t stop. The only option institutions and regular people have to prevent their crypto from being stolen is increasing their cybersecurity, or moving their crypto into a “cold” wallet as opposed to a “hot” wallet. The difference between the two, simply put, is a hot wallet is connected to the internet, whereas a cold wallet is typically not. The reason most people don’t hold crypto in cold wallets is because it’s less accessible, therefore less convenient.
The hackers in North Korea are so good at hacking, they don’t just use their skills to steal crypto. Last February, the US Justice Department charged three North Koreans for conspiring to steal more than $1.3 billion from banks and companies around the world, in addition to orchestrating crypto heists.
In 2016, they hit the central bank in Bangladesh for more than $81 million.
In 2014, they hacked Sony in retaliation for their release of the movie The Interview, which criticized Kim Jong Un. The hackers released personal data of Sony Pictures employees, embarrassing emails, and unreleased scripts and films.
I want to say North Korea has the best hackers in the world because of the massive sums of money they’ve stolen, but they also keep getting caught…but that might be because they don’t face extradition so they care less…I’m not sure. I just know if I owned crypto right now, I’d be scared of them, and hold all my bitcoin on a flash drive.