Pirates working for the North Korean government have stolen more than $ 2 billion in crypto so far this year, according to the Elliptic blockchain analysis company.
Tuesday, Elliptic published a blog post with this new estimate, which, according to the company, is “the greatest annual total ever recorded, with three months to go”, and is based on more than 30 piratages this year.
The previous record dates back to 2022 when North Korea had stolen $ 1.35 billion. The total amount of cryptocurrencies stolen by the regime since 2017 is at least $ 6 billion, according to Elliptic, which said that this figure could still be underestimated.
“The actual figure could be even higher. Awarding cybervols to North Korea is not an exact science,” read the blog.
“We are aware of many other flights which share some of the characteristics of the activities related to North Korea, but we lack sufficient evidence to be definitively attributed. Other flights are probably not reported and remain unknown,” said Elliptic.
The company has said that the main targets of North Korea remain the exchanges of cryptocurrencies, but that the IT hackers also begin to target “wealthy individuals” who have large quantities of cryptocurrencies.
And this is not the only recent change, said the company.
“The majority of computer hacks in 2025 were perpetrated through social engineering attacks, where computer hackers deceive or manipulate individuals in order to access cryptocurrency,” you can read in the blog. “This marks a change compared to previous attacks where, in many cases, technical flaws in cryptographic infrastructure were exploited to steal funds. This change highlights that the weak point of the safety of cryptocurrency is more and more human rather than technical.”
Elliptic’s estimate seems to comply with that of other organizations. Last year, the United Nations Security Council estimated that between 2017 and 2023, North Korean pirates stole $ 3 billion in cryptocurrencies. By adding elliptic estimates of $ 2 billion for this year and $ 742.8 million last year, the total is close to the figure of $ 6 billion.
Governments of Japan, South Korea and the United States have accused North Korean IT pirates of having stolen more than $ 659 million in 2024, almost the same figure as Elliptic.
The United Nations believe that the regime led by Kim Jong-un uses the stolen crypto to finance its nuclear weapon program.
This year’s record was mainly fueled by the massive flight of more than $ 1.4 billion on the cryptographic exchange bybit, that the FBI and several supervisory companies and researchers from the blockchain have attributed to North Korea.
Other victims of North Korean pirates in the world of cryptography over the years have been the game to win infinity Axie ($ 625 million in 2022), the crypto startup Harmony ($ 100 in 2022) and the exchange of Crypto Wazirx ($ 235 million in 2024), among others.
