$BNB Let's all work together to fend off North Korean hackers
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华尔街Alex
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Why are North Korean hackers so good? Before we talk tech, let's take a look at the numbers 👇👇
North Korea has been sanctioned to the point where it’s almost cut off from the global banking system, making it incredibly hard to get foreign currency through legitimate channels.
That leaves two options:
Build missiles: steel, fuel, and foreign currency—all expensive.
Train hackers: an air-conditioned room, a few computers, and plenty of coffee. That’s all it takes.
And one successful hack can bring in billions of dollars—equivalent to half the country’s annual foreign currency earnings.
If you were North Korea, you’d make it a top priority too 😶
That’s why its hackers are trained as a “national project”:
▪️ In elementary school, promising kids are identified through math competitions and logic tests. Those selected leave home to live at a secluded school in Pyongyang.
▪️ At university, they attend Kim Il Sung University or Pyongyang University of Automation. Their days are packed with four or five lectures, with no entertainment. They’re not assessed by handing in assignments, but by actually hacking into networks in South Korea, Europe, and the US.
▪️ Once they start working, many are sent to Shenyang, Dalian, Russia, and Southeast Asia because power outages are frequent at home and internet speeds are poor.
Abroad, their daily lives are sharply divided:
During work hours, they’re freelance engineers working remotely for Western companies and Web3 projects—and may even have a decent reputation.
After work, they dig up system vulnerabilities they noted during the day, or pose as recruiters on LinkedIn and send out absurdly high-paying job offers, hoping technical staff at crypto exchanges will open the attachments.
What we see as crime is, in North Korea’s eyes, simply a national business with extremely low costs and extremely high returns.
Rough estimates suggest that since 2021, North Korean hackers have stolen more than $13 billion from the crypto market. And in 2026 alone, they stole more than in the previous four years combined. The number of attacks is falling, but the amount stolen in each one is getting bigger and bigger #币安披露黑客事件进展63亿美元损失已弥补八成 #朝鲜黑客
North Korea has been sanctioned to the point where it’s almost cut off from the global banking system, making it incredibly hard to get foreign currency through legitimate channels.
That leaves two options:
Build missiles: steel, fuel, and foreign currency—all expensive.
Train hackers: an air-conditioned room, a few computers, and plenty of coffee. That’s all it takes.
And one successful hack can bring in billions of dollars—equivalent to half the country’s annual foreign currency earnings.
If you were North Korea, you’d make it a top priority too 😶
That’s why its hackers are trained as a “national project”:
▪️ In elementary school, promising kids are identified through math competitions and logic tests. Those selected leave home to live at a secluded school in Pyongyang.
▪️ At university, they attend Kim Il Sung University or Pyongyang University of Automation. Their days are packed with four or five lectures, with no entertainment. They’re not assessed by handing in assignments, but by actually hacking into networks in South Korea, Europe, and the US.
▪️ Once they start working, many are sent to Shenyang, Dalian, Russia, and Southeast Asia because power outages are frequent at home and internet speeds are poor.
Abroad, their daily lives are sharply divided:
During work hours, they’re freelance engineers working remotely for Western companies and Web3 projects—and may even have a decent reputation.
After work, they dig up system vulnerabilities they noted during the day, or pose as recruiters on LinkedIn and send out absurdly high-paying job offers, hoping technical staff at crypto exchanges will open the attachments.
What we see as crime is, in North Korea’s eyes, simply a national business with extremely low costs and extremely high returns.
Rough estimates suggest that since 2021, North Korean hackers have stolen more than $13 billion from the crypto market. And in 2026 alone, they stole more than in the previous four years combined. The number of attacks is falling, but the amount stolen in each one is getting bigger and bigger #币安披露黑客事件进展63亿美元损失已弥补八成 #朝鲜黑客
