With attacks on Hollywood studios, Asian central banks and cryptocurrency exchanges, isolated North Korea has gained a reputation as a country from which some of the world’s most dangerous and audacious hackers operate.
The state rewards its best hackers, responsible for thefts such as the hacking attack on the crypto platform Binance, which gained as much as $6,3 billion, with privileges such as spacious apartments in the capital Pyongyang and large cash prizes in foreign currency.
According to defectors and analysts, leader Kim Jong Un has built an army of top hackers thanks to such incentives, as part of a program that has existed for more than a decade and through which 200 of the most intelligent high school students are selected each year to train in computer engineering.
Only a small fraction of them end up becoming part of the hacker group that went from running illegal gambling sites in its early days to carrying out the world’s largest cyber heist last month, the sources said.
“They are actually one of Kim Jong Un’s secret weapons,” Kim Heung Kwang, a North Korean defector who trained hackers for the state before fleeing to South Korea in 2004, told Reuters.
“There is no other country that trains hackers in this way, systematically seeking out the most intelligent children solely to turn them into operatives,” he added. “It doesn’t matter whether they want to become hackers or not.”
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Binance have said North Korea is responsible for the hacking of the crypto platform, but Pyongyang has denied involvement. Blockchain transaction research companies have attributed the attack to a North Korean group known as “TraderTraitor.”
Systematic selection
North Korea established a cyber unit in 1998, but its importance grew after Kim Jong Un came to power, who in 2013 declared cyber warfare, along with nuclear weapons and missiles, a “universal sword” crucial to the country’s strike capabilities.
photo: REUTERS
The selection of candidates begins in elementary school, when children are only 11 or 12 years old, and authorities select about 150 to 200 students each year to study computer science, Kwang, a former instructor, and two defectors who worked in the IT sector told Reuters.
At the age of 17, the most successful students are sent to the best North Korean universities, where they undergo additional checks before a select few finally become part of the military’s cyber unit as hackers, they added.
In addition to advanced mathematics and foreign languages, the training includes areas such as cryptocurrency protocols and reverse engineering of foreign hardware devices, one of them said.
Those who don’t become hackers train to develop software and applications for Western companies, working remotely.
“North Korean hackers are among the most aggressive and highly trained cyber actors in the world,” Shin Beom-chul, a former deputy defense minister in South Korea, told the Financial Times. “They undergo systematic training and are engaged in providing the regime with foreign exchange,” he added.
“While the best students in South Korea can choose medicine or other prestigious professions, North Korea directs the most talented into nuclear and cyber programs, practically guaranteeing their future,” said Lim Jong-in, professor emeritus at Korea University’s School of Cybersecurity.
Among the privileges hackers can receive are trips to allied countries, such as China, where they have much freer access to the internet. Successful hacking operations can bring their military unit as much as 30 percent of the profits from the stolen money, paid out in US dollars, and hackers can also get an apartment in the capital, where their parents can also live, Kim said.
“There are testimonies that successful cyber experts are given apartments in Pyongyang,” Lim said, adding that their area can be up to 132 square meters.
Such experts can also gain the right to membership in the ruling party, as well as the possibility of prestigious marriages with members of elite families, said one of the defectors.
However, this is a relatively small group. According to a 2024 estimate by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, around 8.400 people were engaged in North Korean cyberwarfare operations.
North Korean state media does not publicly celebrate the successes of its hackers, but regularly highlights students who demonstrate programming talent.
According to one defector, the official title of a hacker in North Korea was “scientist” or “researcher.”
AI increases risks
The risks are likely to increase further, experts say, with the widespread use of artificial intelligence, which helps hackers detect security vulnerabilities and automate attempts to exploit them. “AI has given hackers wings,” Simon Choi, chief technology officer at cybersecurity firm StealthMole, told the FT. “The gates of hell have opened because North Korea is extremely determined to carry out these attacks.”
Because North Korean hackers act on behalf of the state, experts say they can operate without fear of prosecution. Choi said that makes them bolder than their counterparts in other countries.
“You could clearly see the structure typical of the military. Strictly set schedules, cleaning boots, everything was very organized,” YouTuber Deeveeaar, who claims to have hacked cameras that monitor North Korean IT workers at their workplaces, told Reuters.
“To say they ‘use AI a lot’ would be an understatement. AI is the very backbone of their operation,” he said, noting that they use paid ChatGPT accounts, Claude Code and Cursor, among a number of other AI-based tools.
“They use them to write programming code, change their biographies and create new ones, and even forge documents and identities.”
Difficult working conditions
However, the life of a hacker or elite technology expert working for North Korea is extremely difficult, especially when they are assigned a specific task or sent abroad, according to former IT workers and human rights organizations.
Living in cramped spaces, workdays that often last longer than 10 hours, constant supervision and strictly set goals are just some of the negative aspects of their job, said former IT workers interviewed for last year’s report by the human rights organization PSCORE.
“There is always pressure to keep making money,” said the organization’s executive director, Nam Bada. “The stress is immense, and because of the psychological strain, people develop health problems they didn’t have before.”
IT workers must achieve a certain financial goal expressed in dollars each month, or face humiliation and other punishments, Nam said.
Still, analysts believe the hackers’ successes are likely to further embolden the North Korean leader, as their capabilities grow and ambitions grow ever greater.
In the case of Binance, the potential earnings certainly justified the time and effort invested.
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