North Korea is not a country one would expect to field an elite army of hackers capable of pulling off billion-dollar heists. Yet for years, security officials have warned that the regime's cyberattacks are growing more sophisticated, looting enormous sums to support its military and nuclear weapons program. Those fears peaked this week when Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said hackers had made off with some $6 billion in what could be the biggest crypto heist in history. Crypto research firms quickly attributed the attack to North Korea, saying it bore the hallmarks of the country's previous hacks, although officials have not confirmed the North's role. A U.N. panel in 2024 found the regime's cyberattacks had generated about half its foreign currency income.
The Sony Pictures attack in 2014 was one of the first major examples. Hackers associated with the Lazarus Group, a hacking syndicate backed by the North Korean government, breached the company's computers ahead of the release of "The Interview," a comedy about the assassination of North Korea's leader. The leaks humiliated top executives and stole terabytes of data. North Korea has never formally taken responsibility, though leader Kim Jong-un called the film an "act of terrorism."
In 2016, North Korean hackers tried to steal about $1 billion from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Only a spelling error stopped them: a withdrawal request misspelled "foundation" as "fandation," raising suspicion. The hackers still made off with $81 million from the Bangladesh Central Bank, using custom malware that existing virus-protection programs did not recognize.
As the cryptocurrency market boomed in the mid-2010s, North Korea increasingly targeted crypto firms, escalating to large-scale attacks on exchanges by 2020. With borders closed during the coronavirus pandemic, crypto theft became an increasingly vital source of foreign currency for the regime. In 2022, the United States publicly accused the Lazarus Group of stealing $620 million in cryptocurrency.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing