How did North Korea cultivate world-class hackers by stealing $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency?

On February 21, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit was hit by a $1.5 billion hacking incident, once again pushing the actions of North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group to the forefront.

In recent years, this organization has been successful many times, from the stolen KuCoin exchange to the stolen Ronin cross-chain bridge, and even the personal wallet of the founder of Defiance Capital was hacked. The mysterious hacker organization was behind this mysterious hacker organization.

You may be curious, as the most closed country in the world, how North Korea has cultivated such amazing power on the digital battlefield?

In the traditional military field, North Korea finds it difficult to compete with the US-South Korea alliance, but cyber warfare provides it with a strategic leverage of "a little effort to achieve a huge impact".

So since the 1980s, the North Korean government has spent a lot of effort to conduct hacker training and internally formulated the code name "Secret War".

Jang Se-yul, a North Korean who defected to South Korea in 2007, studied at Mirim University, a top engineering school in North Korea (now renamed the University of Automation). During college, Jang took courses offered by 121 bureaus with other hackers.

After graduation, Jang joined the North Korean government's reconnaissance bureau, and Bureau 121 is its elite spy agency. It was then that he began to contact the top hackers in 121 games.

Jang Se-yul later said in an interview with Business Insider that its cyber war threat is more practical and dangerous than North Korea's nuclear threat. "This is a silent war. The war started before a single shot was fired," he said.

The question is, how can a country that is so poor and has such poor resources make great efforts to engage in cyber warfare?

Jang Se-yul's answer is: Because it 's very cheap to train a hacker.

Generally speaking, North Korea is divided into three major classes, including the basic masses (core class), the complex masses (ordinary middle class), and the remnants of the hostile class (landlords, descendants of rich peasants, etc.), and is divided into 56 classes below. These hierarchical classifications are recorded in the residents' ledger and used during the cadre recruitment process.

An Zanri, chairman of the World North Korean Research Center, said that in the past, North Korean hackers also had to look at their background, because if their loyalty to the party declined, it would pose a threat to the body.

Until later, the international community imposed sanctions on North Korea in all aspects, and after North Korea's access to foreign exchange was blocked, it could only illegally earn foreign exchange through cyber attacks.

This also opens up a special channel for cyber war talents, and reduces talents in a non-discipline manner.

Jang's alma mater, the University of Automation, is the core base for North Korean hackers. He said, "Each class only enrolls 100 students, but there are as many as 5,000 applicants."

It can be said that this is the PLUS version of the college entrance examination. Once the application is successful and you become a hacker, you can become the top 1% of North Korea. However, this process is also extremely difficult.

Before these young hackers go to the school, they have to undergo nearly 9 years of rigorous training, and the youngest has received training since the age of 17.

When they were in school, they took six classes a day, each class for 90 minutes, learning various programming languages ​​and operating systems. Spend a lot of time every day to analyze Microsoft's Windows operating system and other programs, and study how to break through computer information systems in hostile countries such as the United States and South Korea.

In addition, their core task is to develop their own hacker programs and computer viruses without having to rely on existing hacker programs outside.

In Jang's opinion, North Korean hackers have no less technical skills than Google or the top programmers of the CIA, and may even be better.

From the first day of education, these "black young players" were given missions and goals, and would be divided into different groups, focusing on attacking different countries and regions, such as the United States, North Korea and Japan. Once hackers are assigned to a specific "country group", they will spend nearly two years undercover entering the country and learn local language and cultural knowledge so that they will not reveal any flaws outside of technology.

Jang said a friend of his works for an overseas department of the 121 Bureau, but he was ostensibly an employee of a North Korean trading company. No one knows his true identity, and his company is operating business normally.

Due to the particularity of cyber warfare, these young hackers can use the Internet freely and grasp the latest foreign trends at the first time. They also know that their country is very "closed and conservative", but this will not shake their patriotism and Loyalty to the leader.

"Even if others are forced to persuade or even provide them with work at the South Korean presidential office, they will not betray their own country." Jang said so.

Of course, once you become a hacker, it means money and privilege.

Young hackers can earn $2,000 per month, twice as much as ambassadors abroad. In addition, they can also obtain luxury apartments in the center of Pyongyang in more than 185 square meters and move their families to the capital, which is undoubtedly extremely attractive.

In the new era when keyboards replace missiles, young hackers' keyboards will become the sword of Damocles of cryptocurrencies.