North Korea’s state-backed hackers have an “aggressive, relentless” knack for finding and exploiting vulnerabilities, making them more dangerous than other groups, a former FBI agent told Benzinga.
Social Engineering Hacks?
North Korean hackers pose an existential threat to cryptocurrency ecosystems, having stolen over $2 billion worth of assets in 2025 alone. Things have worsened in 2026, with April recording the highest number of cryptocurrency hacking incidents on record.
The U.S. government claims that the illegal proceeds from the thefts are used to fund North Korea’s weapons and missile program.
Stephanie Talamantez, who spent more than 20 years with the FBI and now serves as Senior Managing Director at Guidepost Solutions, said that these actors have progressed from simple hacking to sophisticated social engineering techniques.
“A company can put all the guardrails in place possible, but attacks that exploit human psychology can bypass those defenses within moments,” she said.
Talamantez stated that North Korea is running an “aggressive recruitment fraud” in which perpetrators impersonate reputable cryptocurrency companies or headhunters, and that even she was approached in one such attempt on LinkedIn.
It’s worth also highlighting the notorious 2022 Ronin Network breach, in which the Lazarus Group stole nearly $620 million after infiltrating the network by posing as a recruiter on LinkedIn.
But these bad actors have also weaponized people’s trust in other ways.
‘Taking Their Time’ To Select High-Value Targets
Rongui Gu, co-founder and CEO of blockchain security firm CertiK, pointed to Drift Protocol’s $285 million exploit, where attackers spent months posing as a legitimate firm, met targets face-to-face at international conferences and even deposited $1 million of their own money into the platform to build trust.
“This tells us these groups are taking their time to hand-select targets and develop a strategy for infiltration, rather than spraying the market with low-value attacks,” Gu told Benzinga.
Read Also: Tom Lee: ‘ETH’s Price Doesn’t Reflect The Strengthening Of Ethereum’s Fundamentals’
Crypto Industry’s Weaknesses
Despite one high-profile breach after another, the cryptocurrency sector has struggled to implement a sustainable, long-term defense.
“I would argue that the industry’s biggest structural weakness is coordination,” Gu stated, noting that asset freezes, law enforcement referrals, and analytics tracing often happen across different jurisdictions and compliance standards.
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