North Korea’s Crypto Crime Spree: Lazarus Group Swipes $1.5 Billion - Are Your Meme Coins Next?

In a world where keyboards are the new missiles, a shadowy group of hackers is wielding digital keys as a crypto-crushing weapon. And guess who’s back in the spotlight? North Korea’s notorious Lazarus Group.

Just recently, crypto exchange Bybit got hit for a whopping $1.5 billion. Yep, you heard that right – billion with a “B”. And all fingers are pointing at Lazarus Group, the same crew behind a string of high-profile crypto heists.

These guys have been busy. Remember the KuCoin exchange hack? Or the Ronin bridge incident that shook the crypto gaming world? Even some big crypto players, like the founder of Defiance Capital, have had their personal wallets drained. Lazarus Group is suspected in all of these.

So, how does a country known for being super isolated manage to pump out world-class hackers capable of pulling off these mega-heists? Let’s dive in.

From “Secret War” to Crypto Riches

North Korea might not be able to match military might with the likes of the US and South Korea, but they’ve found a clever workaround: cyber warfare. Think of it as digital David versus Goliath.

Way back in the 1980s, North Korea started investing heavily in hacker training under a program they secretly called “Secret War.” They saw the internet as a battlefield where they could punch above their weight.

Jang Se-yul, a North Korean defector who used to study at Mirim University (now University of Automation), North Korea’s top tech school, spilled some secrets. He said that even in college, he and other budding hackers were taking courses run by Bureau 121 – North Korea’s elite cyber espionage unit.

After graduating, Jang joined the Reconnaissance General Bureau, and that’s where he got to work alongside the country’s top hackers in Bureau 121. He later told Business Insider that North Korea’s cyber threat is actually more real and dangerous than their nuclear threats. “It’s a silent war,” he said. “War has already begun without a gunshot.”

But here’s the million-dollar question (or, in this case, the billion-dollar question): how can such a poor country pour resources into cyber warfare?

Jang’s answer is pretty blunt: training hackers is cheap.

Hacker School: More Competitive Than Harvard?

In North Korea, your social class dictates a lot. They have a rigid system dividing people into core, wavering, and hostile classes, further broken down into 56 sub-categories. This class system is tracked in government records and used for everything, including who gets to be a government official.

In the past, being a hacker was a privileged job for those with the “right” background – loyalty to the party was key. But things changed when international sanctions squeezed North Korea’s access to hard currency. Suddenly, hacking became a lucrative way to bring in foreign cash, bypassing those pesky sanctions.

This opened doors for talent, regardless of background. And Jang’s old school, the University of Automation, became ground zero for hacker recruitment. “Each class only takes 100 students, but there are 5,000 applicants,” Jang revealed.

Getting into this hacker program is like winning the lottery, but way harder. If you make it, you’re basically in the top 1% of North Korean society. But the training is brutal.

Imagine this: six 90-minute classes a day, diving deep into programming languages and operating systems. A huge chunk of time is spent dissecting Windows and other systems to figure out how to crack into enemy networks, like those in the US and South Korea.

And it’s not just about using existing tools. These hackers are tasked with creating their own hacking programs and viruses. They’re not just users; they’re builders.

Jang believes these North Korean hackers are on par with, or even better than, top-tier programmers at places like Google or the CIA in terms of pure coding skills.

From day one of their education, these “black soldiers” (as they’re sometimes called) undergo nearly nine years of hardcore training, starting as young as 17.

Living the Hacker High Life (in North Korea?)

After years of intense training, these hackers are assigned targets – different countries and regions, like the US, South Korea, and Japan. If you’re on the “Japan team,” you might spend two years learning Japanese language and culture to blend in and operate undetected.

Jang mentioned a friend in Bureau 121 who was officially employed at a North Korean trading company. Nobody knew his real job. His company was a front, business as usual, while he was working as a state-sponsored hacker.

Ironically, these hackers have pretty good internet access, a rarity in North Korea. They need to stay updated on the latest tech trends and vulnerabilities. They know their country is isolated, but surprisingly, this doesn’t seem to shake their patriotism or loyalty to their leader. Even if you offered them a job at the South Korean presidential palace, they reportedly wouldn’t defect.

Why? Well, hacking comes with perks. We’re talking serious money and privileges. A young hacker can pull in a monthly salary of $200,000 USD – double what a North Korean ambassador makes!

On top of that, they get luxury apartments in Pyongyang, like 1,850 square feet of prime real estate. And they can bring their families to the capital, a huge status symbol. Not bad for pushing buttons in a dark room, right?

So, as we enter an era where cyber warfare is as crucial as traditional warfare, remember the Lazarus Group. Their keyboards are indeed becoming a crypto-crushing Damocles sword. And with billions in crypto at stake, the question is: are your meme coins safe?