It’s the biggest North Korean crypto haul in a single year. Hackers are also increasingly targeting individual users.
The year isn’t even over, but North Korean hackers have already stolen an estimated $2 billion+ in cryptocurrency in 2025, a record-breaking haul.
This is the most North Korean hackers have ever looted in a single year, according to blockchain tracking firm Elliptic. “This brings the cumulative known value of cryptoassets stolen by the [North Korean] regime to more than $6 billion,” it says.
This year in particular, North Korean hackers made a killing by stealing over $1.4 billion from the Bybit exchange in February, what’s become the largest crypto heist in history. To do so, hackers first infiltrated a digit wallet provider, which paved a way for them to compromise an offline “cold wallet” at the Bybit exchange that held 400,000 Ethereum coins.
