North Korea’s hackers supercharge crypto heists with AI skills

Unlike garden-variety hackers targeting individual investors, TraderTraitor uses a strategy known as Big Game Hunting, cybersecurity experts say, helped by AI to seek out high-value crypto businesses to compromise. | AFP-JIJI

By Soobin Kim
BLOOMBERG

Nov 2, 2026

The North Korean group accused of the world’s largest-ever crypto heist is a state-sponsored collective of elite hackers, groomed from an early age to hunt for “big game.” Artificial intelligence has now provided them with a powerful new tool to swell Kim Jong Un’s coffers and fund his military expansion.

Nuclear-armed North Korea maintains a thousands-strong hacker army, but the top unit known as “TraderTraitor,” which the FBI blames for the recent $6.3 billion Binance hack, may only have a dozen or so members, experts say.

Unlike garden-variety hackers targeting individual investors, TraderTraitor uses a strategy known as Big Game Hunting, cybersecurity experts say, helped by AI to seek out high-value crypto businesses to compromise. They’ve been so remarkably successful that the revenues they generate could be funding nearly half of North Korea’s banned weapons programs.

In a time of both misinformation and too much information,
quality journalism is more crucial than ever.
By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

SUBSCRIBE NOW