Cases of major thefts of digital assets are proving to be plentiful in recent times. For example, in the middle of the month, it was reported that an investor lost 10 bitcoins equivalent to about a million dollars and NFT for 1.5 million. He had stored the digital assets using a hardware wallet and hadn’t even touched it for the past two months.

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

How cryptocurrencies are stolen

Overall, North Korea is responsible for 61 per cent of stolen cryptocurrency in 2024, Chainalysis experts note. Here’s a commentary on the matter.

In 2023, North Korea-linked hackers stole about $660.5 million in 20 recorded incidents. In 2024, that amount increased to $1.34 billion stolen in 47 attacks. Accordingly, the growth rate was 102.88 per cent.


The trend of increasing activity of hackers will continue further, because they are trying to steal your coins against the background of approaching holidays. And for this scammers use the most unobvious tactics like sending emails from real Email addresses of popular companies. So investors should be especially careful now.


The volume of stolen funds in cryptocurrencies by year

Hacken manager Luis Lubek told Decrypt that financial co-operation between North Korea and Russian Federation is exacerbating the situation. Still, the scale of problems because of this is growing, which affects the whole sector of the digital asset market.

This increases threats through the sharing of tools and expertise, thereby making defences and responses more complex. Such partnerships have the potential to escalate global cyber conflicts and change the approach to cyber warfare, where alliances will replace single state actions.

One trend in the industry is that North Korea-linked hackers often pose as smart contract developers, deliberately 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 number of hacker attacks in the industry.

Areas of crypto that have been attacked by hackers

For example, the “track record” of North Korean hackers includes the theft of $50 million from Radiant Capital. In this incident, a cybercriminal posed as a former employee of the project to infect his device with malware under the pretext of transferring files to a current representative of the platform.

In general, North Korean criminals are using increasingly sophisticated tactics. Lubek noted that these include “artificial intelligence to create fake personas using dipfake techniques, making it difficult to identify the attackers.” That said, old techniques continue to be a challenge for law enforcement, including identifying sophisticated phishing attacks and fake digital identities.

North Korean hacker activity as a share of total losses

US and international officials claim that North Korea is using stolen cryptocurrency to fund the development of weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile programmes. According to reports from May 2024, the hackers’ activities are funding half of the country’s missile programme.

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Still, sometimes justice gets to some crooks. Two 23-year-old California residents who previously defrauded investors 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 Liaison said Gabriel Hay and Gavin Mayo were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud and one count of stalking, Cointelegraph reported.

The accomplices engaged in sponsoring and promoting their projects by misleading potential investors. The prosecution also alleges that Hay and Meio provided false project roadmaps, claiming plans they had no intention of executing.

The indictment says the fraudsters advertised the Vault of Gems project, calling it the first NFT project “tied to a tangible asset.” However, prosecutors say the developers abandoned the project after raising millions of dollars from investors. Acting Deputy Attorney General Nicole Argentieri, at the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, said the defendants resorted to threats when someone tried to expose them.

Cryptocurrency hacker

Additionally, when one of the project managers revealed their involvement in promoting the NFT platform Faceless, Hay and Meio began going after him, intimidating him and his family. DOJ officials noted that the suspects’ full list of projects includes names such as Vault of Gems, Faceless, Sinful Souls, Clout Coin, Dirty Dogs, Uncovered, MoonPortal, Squiggles, and Roost Coin.


Hackers continue to be an integral part of the crypto industry. Obviously, their presence will be constant, as 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 study the basics of blockchain operation and ways to protect private keys from address.
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