Disappointing results for 2024: how much cryptocurrency did North Korean hackers steal?

There have been plenty of cases of large-scale thefts of digital assets lately. For example, in the middle of the month, it became known that an investor lost 10 bitcoins, equivalent to about a million dollars, and NFTs worth 1.5 million. He stored the digital assets using a hardware wallet and did not even touch it for the last two months.

However, it turned out that the scam victim had signed a malicious transaction almost three years ago. This is what allowed the scammers to access the contents of his wallet and withdraw the crypto.

How Cryptocurrencies Are Stealed

Overall, based on the results of the outgoing year, North Korea is responsible for 61 percent of the stolen cryptocurrency in 2024, according to Chainalysis experts. Here is a commentary on this matter.

In 2023, hackers linked to North Korea stole about $660.5 million in 20 recorded incidents. In 2024, that amount increased to $1.34 billion stolen in 47 attacks, an increase of 102.88 percent.


The trend of growing hacker activity will continue further, because they are trying to steal your coins against the backdrop of the approaching holidays. Moreover, scammers use the most non-obvious tactics for this, such as sending emails from real email addresses of popular companies. That is, investors should be especially careful now.


Hacken manager Louis Lubeck told Decrypt that financial cooperation between North Korea and Russia is making the situation worse. However, the scale of the problems is growing because of this, which affects the entire sector of the digital asset market.

This increases threats by sharing tools and expertise, thereby complicating defense and response measures. Such partnerships could exacerbate global cyber conflicts and change the approach to cyber warfare, with alliances replacing individual states.

One trend in the industry is that hackers linked to North Korea often pose as smart contract developers, intentionally including hidden vulnerabilities or backdoors in projects. As noted above, there were 47 major hacks linked to the region in 2024, accounting for two-thirds of the total hacking in the industry.

For example, the North Korean hackers’ track record includes stealing $50 million from Radiant Capital. In this incident, the cybercriminal posed as a former employee of the project in order to infect the device of an existing representative of the platform with malware under the pretext of transferring files.

Overall, North Korean criminals are using increasingly sophisticated tactics. Lubeck noted that these include “artificial intelligence to create fake identities using deepfake technology, making it difficult to identify the attackers.” However, older methods remain a challenge for law enforcement, including identifying sophisticated phishing attacks and fake digital identities.

US and international officials claim that North Korea is using stolen cryptocurrency to fund weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile programs. According to reports from May 2024, hacking activity funds half of the country’s missile program.

Still, justice sometimes reaches some of the scammers. Two 23-year-old California residents who previously defrauded investors out of more than $22 million through a series of NFT scams have been arrested in Los Angeles and charged with fraud.

In a press release, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Public Affairs said Gabriel Hay and Gavin Mayo were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, and one count of stalking, Cointelegraph reports .

The co-conspirators funded and promoted their projects by misleading potential investors. The indictment also alleges that Hay and Mayo provided false roadmaps for the projects, stating plans they had no intention of carrying out.

The indictment says the scammers marketed the Vault of Gems project as the first NFT project “tied to a tangible asset.” But prosecutors say the developers abandoned the project after collecting millions of dollars from investors. Acting Deputy Attorney General Nicole Argentieri, who leads the Justice Department’s criminal division, said the defendants used threats when someone tried to expose them.

Additionally, when one of the project managers revealed their involvement in promoting the NFT platform Faceless, Hay and Mayo began hunting him down, threatening him and his family. The full list of suspected projects includes names such as Vault of Gems, Faceless, Sinful Souls, Clout Coin, Dirty Dogs, Uncovered, MoonPortal, Squiggles, and Roost Coin, the DOJ noted.


Hackers continue to be an integral part of the crypto industry. Apparently, their presence will be permanent, because the coin niche is regularly replenished with newcomers, who are primarily hunted by scammers. Therefore, investors should not only get a hardware wallet, but also learn the basics of how the blockchain works and how to protect private keys from an address.


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