#疑似朝鲜攻击占加密黑客损失近89%
$BTC
Why are North Korean hackers so formidable? Before you focus on their technical skills, take a look at their “national ledger” and it’ll all make sense.
Under global sanctions, they can’t get foreign currency through legitimate channels. Building missiles costs a fortune; training hackers? A few computers and some coffee will do. One successful hack can bring in billions, half the country’s foreign currency earnings for a year. If you were in their shoes, you’d make it a top national priority too.
This is clearly being developed as a “national project”: promising students are picked through math competitions in elementary school and sent straight to closed schools in Pyongyang. At university, they’re not tested on homework, but on their ability to actually break into Western networks. And because power outages are common at home, many are sent to Shenyang, Russia, and Southeast Asia.
Their daily lives are deeply divided: by day, they work on Web3 projects as well-regarded freelance engineers; by night, they probe systems for weaknesses or pose as recruiters on LinkedIn, sending lucrative job offers to lure cryptocurrency exchange employees into clicking on malware.
By rough estimates, they’ve stolen more than $13 billion since 2021. What they’ve stolen just this year exceeds the combined total for the previous four years. They’re carrying out fewer attacks, but each one is bringing in more and more.
What we see as crime is, in their eyes, simply a national business with minimal investment and enormous returns.
$BTC
Why are North Korean hackers so formidable? Before you focus on their technical skills, take a look at their “national ledger” and it’ll all make sense.
Under global sanctions, they can’t get foreign currency through legitimate channels. Building missiles costs a fortune; training hackers? A few computers and some coffee will do. One successful hack can bring in billions, half the country’s foreign currency earnings for a year. If you were in their shoes, you’d make it a top national priority too.
This is clearly being developed as a “national project”: promising students are picked through math competitions in elementary school and sent straight to closed schools in Pyongyang. At university, they’re not tested on homework, but on their ability to actually break into Western networks. And because power outages are common at home, many are sent to Shenyang, Russia, and Southeast Asia.
Their daily lives are deeply divided: by day, they work on Web3 projects as well-regarded freelance engineers; by night, they probe systems for weaknesses or pose as recruiters on LinkedIn, sending lucrative job offers to lure cryptocurrency exchange employees into clicking on malware.
By rough estimates, they’ve stolen more than $13 billion since 2021. What they’ve stolen just this year exceeds the combined total for the previous four years. They’re carrying out fewer attacks, but each one is bringing in more and more.
What we see as crime is, in their eyes, simply a national business with minimal investment and enormous returns.
