North Korea stole $2.57 billion of crypto this year, report says

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A sharp jump from 2024 underscores North Korea’s growing ability to pull off massive heists.

PHOTO: LIANHE ZAOBAO

North Korean hackers stole a record US$2 billion (S$2.57 billion) of crypto this year, researchers said, a sharp jump from 2024 that underscores the country’s growing ability to pull off massive heists.

Much of the total comes from the largest digital heist in the history of cryptocurrency in February, when North Korean hackers took US$1.5 billion from the Bybit crypto exchange, according to a report from blockchain analytics company Chainalysis. That incident helped boost the country’s estimated crypto spoils to at least US$6.75 billion since the records began, the research group said.

North Korea “continues to pose the most significant nation-state threat to cryptocurrency security”, the report said. Its haul from crypto theft rose more than 50 per cent from last year, the research showed, accounting for the lion’s share of the estimated US$3.4 billion in theft the cryptocurrency industry witnessed from January through early December.

Though there were fewer known heists by North Korea this year, the country’s practice of embedding IT workers inside crypto services to gain privileged access helped Pyongyang gain high-impact compromises, researchers said.

“Stealing crypto has become a lucrative mechanism to fund North Korea,” Andrew Fierman, the head of national security intelligence for Chainalysis, told Bloomberg News in an email. “As a result, the proceeds from these hacks bolster the regime and their weapons of mass destruction program.”

Chainalysis said the massive influx of stolen funds in early 2025 gave researchers an unprecedented view into how North Korean hackers launder