A recent six-month infiltration campaign by North Korean hackers at Drift has sent shockwaves through the crypto industry, which is still reeling from massive exploits. However, a more pressing question has emerged: why does North Korea consistently target crypto, and what sets its approach apart from other state-sponsored hacking operations? According to security experts, the answer lies in the regime's need for a revenue stream to stay afloat.
'North Korea lacks the luxury of patience,' said Dave Schwed, COO at SVRN and founder of Yeshiva University's cybersecurity masters program. 'Under comprehensive international sanctions, they require hard currency to fund their weapons programs.
The UN and multiple intelligence agencies have confirmed that crypto theft is a primary funding mechanism for their nuclear and ballistic missile development.' This urgency explains why North Korean hackers carry out large-scale, traceable heists on public blockchains instead of using crypto to evade sanctions quietly. The answer, Schwed argues, is structural. Unlike Russia and Iran, which have functioning economies and use crypto as a payment rail, North Korea has almost nothing to sell.
'Their exports are almost entirely sanctioned, and they don't have a functioning economy that needs a payment rail. They need direct revenue,' Schwed said. 'Crypto theft provides them with immediate access to liquid value globally, without requiring a counterparty willing to do business with them.' This distinction - crypto as infrastructure versus crypto as a target - sets North Korea apart from other state-sponsored hacking operations.
While Russia and Iran use crypto to route money around sanctions and fund proxy networks, North Korea is running a state-sponsored heist operation. 'Their targets are exchanges, wallet providers, DeFi protocols, and individual engineers and founders with signing authority or infrastructure access,' said Alexander Urbelis, CISO at ENS Labs and professor of cybersecurity at King's College London. 'The victim is whoever holds the keys or access to the infrastructure that holds the keys.' Russia and Iran, by comparison, view crypto as incidental to their broader geopolitical goals.
'Russia targets elections, energy infrastructure, and government systems, while Iran goes after dissidents and regional adversaries,' Urbelis said. 'When either of them touches crypto, it's to move money, not to steal it from the ecosystem.' North Korea's singular focus has led its operatives to adopt tactics more commonly associated with intelligence agencies than criminal hackers, including months-long relationship building, fabricated identities, and supply chain infiltration. The Drift campaign is just the latest example. 'You're not defending against a phishing email from a random scammer,' Urbelis said.
'You're defending against someone who spent six months building a relationship specifically to compromise one person with the access you need to protect.' Crypto's architecture makes it a uniquely attractive hunting ground. Unlike traditional finance, where successful hacks encounter friction in the form of compliance checks and settlement delays, crypto transactions are final once signed and confirmed. 'Once a transaction is signed and confirmed, it's final,' Urbelis said.
The Bybit exploit earlier last year moved $1.5 billion in roughly 30 minutes, a pace and scale that would be nearly impossible in the traditional banking system. This finality fundamentally changes the security calculus.
In banking, a reasonable defense can be built across prevention, detection, and response, as there's always a window to freeze funds or reverse a wire. In crypto, that window barely exists, making it essential to stop an attack before it happens. While banks operate under decades of regulatory guidance and audit requirements, many crypto projects are still improvising, often prioritizing speed and innovation over governance and controls. This gap creates an environment where even sophisticated teams can be vulnerable, particularly to North Korea's long-term infiltration tactics.
'This is the hardest operational security problem in crypto right now,' Urbelis said of the challenge of vetting against sophisticated fake identities and third-party intermediaries. 'I don't think the industry has solved it.'