North Korean Hackers Turn on Government, Get Caught Red-Handed

North Korea's elite hackers have been accused of turning on their own government and attempting to steal from state-controlled banks. The group, made up of veterans from a cyber operations unit under North Korea's Reconnaissance and Intelligence General Bureau, allegedly recruited young IT prodigies from Kim Chaek University of Technology and Pyongyang University of Science.

The hackers used Chinese-made specialist wireless equipment and encrypted messaging apps to break into the internal networks and foreign payment systems of both banks. Once inside, they took small portions of state trade funds and moved them into cryptocurrency wallets, using brokers in China to convert the cryptocurrency back into cash.

However, officials in Pyongyang began noticing discrepancies in foreign currency payment approvals and flagged suspicious access to overseas IP addresses. Investigators for the National Intelligence Agency traced encrypted cryptocurrency traffic to a location in Pyongyang and raided it on July 12, catching the hackers while they were laundering funds via their computers.