
North Korea Stole $2 Billion Last Year. Financial Firms Are Next. Here's How the New AI-Powered Heists Work.
On February 21, 2025, a cryptocurrency exchange called Bybit processed a routine transaction. Or, rather, it appeared routine. Behind the interface, a North Korean hacking cell known as TraderTraitor had compromised a third-party signing provider, manipulating the multisig wallet infrastructure to approve a series of transfers that should never have occurred. By the time anyone understood what had happened, $1.5 billion in digital assets had been drained — the largest theft in the history of cryptocurrency, larger than the Ronin Bridge exploit, larger than the Poly Network hack, larger than any bank robbery ever attempted. It took the attackers minutes. It took the FBI weeks to confirm what investigators already knew: the fingerprints were Pyongyang's.


