North Korea just pulled off a digital heist that would make Bernie Madoff slobber in his grave.
Kim Jong-Un"s elite hacker squad snatched $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency from some exchange called Bybit. As The Telegraph reports, "the $1.5bn total eclipses the largest known bank theft of all time, when Saddam Hussein stole $1bn from the Iraqi central bank ahead of the Iraq War in 2003."
These North Korean hackers, nicknamed the Lazarus Group (which sounds like a rejected Marvel villain team), didn't even need to flex their 1337 H4x0r skillz. They just sent a phishing email. The biggest crypto heist in history started with the digital equivalent of "Hey buddy, click this link!"
Some poor Bybit schmuck clicked that link and BOOM — the hackers got inside their systems. Then they waited for the exchange to transfer money from their super-secure "cold wallet" and snatched it mid-transfer.
Bybit's CEO Ben Zhou is super mad about it. He declared "war" on the hackers and is offering a $140 million bounty, which is cute considering they just stole ten times that amount. "If you steal, you will be found, and justice will be swift," Zhou declared, apparently unaware that North Korea has been working this con for years.
And what's Little Rocket Man doing with all this digital cash? Funding his missile program, of course! Nothing says "responsible government" like stealing internet money to build bigger boom-booms! This is Kim's financial strategy now — his hackers stole 61% of all cryptocurrency stolen globally last year. No wonder Trump wants to be this guy!
Meanwhile, cryptocurrency "experts" have managed to recover a whopping… $40 million. That's like finding one fry that fell out of your Happy Meal bag after the rest got eaten.
Previously:
• How North Korea perfected counterfeiting $100 bills
• Video of a 7-day vacation in North Korea
• Video about differences between visiting North Korea and South Korea
• North Korea's creepy fake civilian village fools no one
• Train to nowhere and dead-eyed stares: my visit to the Korean demilitarized zone
• New photo book gives rare glimpse inside North Korea
• Revealed: North Korea's covert uranium enrichment site Kangson
