Reported by: Daniel Van Boom

The Lazarus Group, a hacking outfit associated with  North Korea’s government, managed to drain over $600 million in crypto from a blockchain used by NFT game Axie Infinity. North Korean hackers stole $840 million in the first five months of 2022, according to Chainalysis data, over $200 million more than they’d plundered in 2020 and 2021 combined. 

That is of extraordinary consequence. About a third of the crypto North Korea loots goes into its weapons program, including nuclear weapons, estimates Anne Neuberger, a deputy national security adviser in the Biden administration. It’s also funneled to the country’s espionage operations. When two South Koreans earlier this year were revealed to have been stealing military information for a North Korean spy, it turned out they’d been paid in bitcoin.

“Crypto is arguably now essential to North Korea,” said Nick Carlsen, a former North Korea analyst at the FBI who now works for crypto security firm TRM Labs. “By any standard, they are a crypto superpower.”

A crypto superpower with nuclear weapons, that is. A country whose crypto prowess, North Korea watchers say, is directly funding the development of those nukes, with the odds of a new nuclear weapons test growing. The rogue nation has been ratcheting up ballistic missile tests in the past 10 days: Over 5 million residents of Japan were told to seek immediate shelter on Wednesday after North Korea launched a missile over the island of Hokkaido. It’s highly likely this, too, was funded at least in part by stolen cryptocurrency.

Read full report: https://www.cnet.com/culture/features/north-koreas-crypto-hackers-are-paving-the-road-to-nuclear-armageddon/