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North Korean groups have stolen $1.34bn through cryptocurrency hacks this year, their highest level of such thefts on record, underlining the importance of this revenue stream for Pyongyang.
The total value of the thefts by North Korean-affiliated groups, across 47 incidents so far in 2024, is more than double the amount they took last year, according to data from Chainalysis, a blockchain research group. It means the country now accounts for two-thirds of cryptocurrency hacks globally.
North Korean operatives have emerged as “the world’s leading bank robbers” in recent years, according to US officials, after developing an army of highly trained hackers over decades to target western institutions.
A UN panel of experts that monitors the implementation of international sanctions has identified that North Korea uses the money raised by criminal cyber operations to help fund its illicit ballistic missile and nuclear programmes.
The US has estimated that as much as a third of North Korea’s missile programme is funded by cyber crime.
“North Korea has long sought to evade international sanctions to support its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles programmes,” said Andrew Fierman, head of national security intelligence at Chainalysis.
“Historically, North Korea has done so through a variety of techniques, including evasive shipping tactics, overseas workers and the use of shell companies. Stealing cryptocurrency has become another mechanism in their toolkit to fund the regime.”
Among the more daring heists attributed to North Korean hackers was the theft of 4,500 bitcoin with a value of $305mn from Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin in May.
Chainalysis traced much of the stolen bitcoin through a web of intermediaries before it eventually ended up at a Cambodian crypto exchange. DMM Bitcoin announced this month it would close down after the hack and transfer its customers’ accounts to other exchanges.
The total value of stolen cryptocurrency rose 21 per cent to $2.2bn this year, according to Chainalysis’s data, while the number of recorded hacks hit an all-time high of 303.
The thefts come as bitcoin has soared this year to more than $100,000, boosted by Donald Trump’s US presidential election victory in November.
However, Chainalysis’s data also shows that North Korea’s hacking activity slowed in the second half of the year after the leaders of North Korea and Russia, Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, signed a strategic partnership in June to deepen trade and military links between the two countries. The agreement has led to North Korean troops fighting alongside Russians in Ukraine.
Analysts suggest that as North Korea has received more support from Russia it is becoming less reliant on cyber crime.
Since the agreement was signed, the average daily crypto loss attributed to North Korean groups has halved, while losses with no link to the country have risen slightly.
“It may be possible that the hermit kingdom has had less reliance on its cyber criminal activity in the second half of the year,” said Chainalysis’s Fierman.
