North Korean Hackers ‘Industrialized’ Crypto Theft

North Korea has “industrialized” cryptocurrency theft, turning it into a primary mechanism of revenue for the pariah state. That’s the conclusion of a new report by crypto security firm CertiK, which found that North Korean hackers have stolen $6.75 billion over the past decade, $2.6 billion of it in the past 18 months alone. The biggest incident by far was the 2025 Bybit hack, which saw $1.5 billion drained from the exchange. CertiK pointed to the “precision and scale of North Korean operations,” noting that in the past few years there have been fewer attacks that systematically targeted the highest-value opportunities. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been…