North Korean cyberwarfare assaults on the cryptocurrency business are rising in sophistication and within the variety of teams concerned in such prison exercise, crypto agency Paradigm warns in report titled “Demystifying the North Korean Risk.”
North Korea-originated cyberattacks vary from assaults on exchanges and social engineering makes an attempt to phishing assaults and complicated provide chain hijacks, the report says. In some circumstances, the assaults take a yr to play out, with North Korean operatives biding their time.
The United Nations estimates that between 2017 and 2023, North Korean hackers have netted the nation $3 billion. The overall haul has skyrocketed in 2024 and this yr, with profitable assaults towards crypto exchanges WazirX and Bybit, which collectively netted attackers round $1.7 billion.
Paradigm writes that the North Korean organizations orchestrating these assaults quantity at the very least 5: Lazarus Group, Spinout, AppleJeus, Harmful Password, and TraitorTrader. There’s additionally a coalition of North Korean operatives who pose as IT employees, infiltrating tech firms world wide.
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Excessive-profile assaults and predictable laundering strategies
Lazarus Group, probably the most well-known North Korean hacking crew, is given credit score for a number of the most high-profile cyberattacks since 2016. In accordance with Paradigm, the group hacked Sony and the Financial institution of Bangladesh in 2016 and helped orchestrate the WannaCry 2.0 ransomware assault in 2017.
It has additionally taken purpose on the cryptocurrency business, sometimes to great effect. In 2017, the group hit two crypto exchanges — Youbit and Bithumb. In 2022, Lazarus Group exploited the Ronin Bridge, leading to a whole lot of thousands and thousands in misplaced belongings. And in 2025, it infamously stole $1.5 billion from Bybit, sending shock all through the crypto neighborhood. The group could also be behind some Solana memecoin scams.
As Chainalysis and different organizations have defined, Lazarus Group additionally has predictable money laundering methods after securing a haul. It breaks up the stolen quantity into smaller and smaller items, sending them to numerous different wallets. It then swaps the extra illiquid cash for these with increased liquidity and converts a lot of it to Bitcoin (BTC). After that, the group could sit on the stolen cash for a protracted time period till the eye from regulation enforcement dies down.
The FBI has up to now recognized three alleged members of the Lazarus Group, accusing them of cybercrimes. In February 2021, the US Justice Division indicted two of these members for involvement in international cybercrimes.
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