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Why are North Korean hackers such good crypto thieves?
They recently pulled off the world’s biggest cyberheist.
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In 2023, North Korean hackers made away with a total of US$661 million (S$880 million). They doubled the sum in 2024.
PHOTO: ST FILE
The Economist
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Feb 21 began as a typical day, recalled Mr Ben Zhou, the boss of ByBit, a Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange. Before going to bed, he approved a fund transfer between the firm’s accounts, a “typical manoeuvre” performed while servicing more than 60 million users around the world. Half an hour later, he got a phone call. “Ben, there’s an issue,” his chief financial officer said, voice shaking. “We might have been hacked… all of the Ethereum is gone.”
Independent investigators and America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) soon pointed the finger at a familiar culprit: North Korea. Hackers from the hermit kingdom have established themselves as one of the biggest threats to the crypto industry – and as a crucial source of revenue for leader Kim Jong Un’s regime, helping it to weather international sanctions, to pamper its elites and to fund its missile and nuclear weapons programmes.
