North Korean hackers successfully laundered $300 million from a massive crypto heist.

The Lazarus Group, a well-known cybercriminal outfit linked to North Korea, pulled off the $1.5 billion crypto heist two weeks ago by infiltrating crypto exchange ByBit.

Since then, investigators have been scrambling to track and block the stolen digital assets before they can be converted into usable cash.

Already, the hackers have converted at least $300 million (£232 million) to unrecoverable funds.

Experts believe the group is working around the clock to move and disguise the money.

“Every minute matters for the hackers who are trying to confuse the money trail and they are extremely sophisticated in what they’re doing,” said Dr. Tom Robinson, co-founder of crypto investigator Elliptic.

“I imagine they have an entire room of people doing this using automated tools and years of experience. We can also see from their activity that they only take a few hours break each day, possibly working in shifts to get the crypto turned into cash.”

Now, ByBit has confirmed that 20% of the total haul has now ‘gone dark,’ meaning it is effectively lost.

Dr. Robinson also pointed out that North Korea is the best at laundering crypto, potentially carrying out dozens of hacks over the years to fund the nation’s military and nuclear development.

The hackers struck on 21 February, targeting a ByBit supplier and secretly altering a digital wallet address which was meant to receive 401,000 Ethereum crypto coins.

Unknowingly, ByBit transferred the entire sum to the hackers, thinking it was its own digital wallet.

ByBit’s CEO, Ben Zhou, assured customers that none of their funds have been affected as the company has since replaced the stolen assets using loans from investors.

Furthermore, Zhou announced that his company was ‘waging war on Lazarus’ and announced a bounty program, which encourages members of the public to trace the stolen funds and alert crypto firms to block transfers where possible. It’s working well as so far, 20 people have earned over $4 million in rewards for identifying and freezing $40 million of the stolen funds.

Because crypto transactions are public, investigators can follow the stolen money as it moves through the blockchain.

If Lazarus tries to convert the coins into traditional currencies like US dollars, major crypto exchanges can block those transactions if they detect a link to criminal activity.

Despite the efforts to catch the perpetrators, many experts believe most of the stolen money will never be recovered.

“North Korea is a very closed system and closed economy so they created a successful industry for hacking and laundering and they don’t care about the negative impression of cyber crime,” said Dr. Dorit Dor at cybersecurity company Check Point.

North Korea is transforming a former missile testing site into a beachfront ‘tourist city.’

The country has built a resort complex with a 5-kilometre beach and 150 hotels on the Kalma Peninsula near the city of Wonsan on the east coast. And it’s set to open this year.

It’s considered to be a major step forward for North Korea’s tourism industry.

But what’s unique about this site is that it was previously used as a missile testing site.

State media recently shared photos of leader Kim Jong Un touring the facilities with his daughter, Kim Ju Ae.

“The construction of the Kalma coastal tourist area is the first big step of great significance in putting the national tourist industry on a track of epochal development,” the leader was quoted.

US-based North Korea expert Jacob Bogle said the development is likely to be the largest single-owner resort complex in the world and compared it to that of the Benidorm area of Spain’s Costa Blanca.

“But Benidorm is a collection of different resorts and hotels owned by different companies built up over years and years,” he added.

“Wonsan is one single, giant complex and, as far as I’m aware, there aren’t any other single-owner beach resorts on this scale.”

Bogle has developed a comprehensive map of North Korea and claimed there would also be an aquarium and sports facilities at the resort – enough to keep everyone busy.

“You would be able to do just about anything [at the resort] that you could elsewhere, you’re just not really going to be able to leave,” he said.

Alexander Hynd, a lecturer at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute, explained that the project was a way to host foreign tourists and obtain foreign currency.

“My sense is that the primary target market will be North Korea’s neighbours to the north, predominantly Russia and China, but North Korea also has a modest domestic tourism industry,” Dr. Hynd said.

While the resort promises luxury, tourism in North Korea remains highly controlled. Visitors are typically restricted to guided group tours, and it seems the same rules will apply here.

Bogle confirmed: “Once you’re there, you’re there for your trip.”

The Wonsan-Kalma project began in 2014 and was initially scheduled to open in 2019 but the pandemic put the whole thing on hold.

At one point, the half-built site was reportedly taken over by ‘kkotjebi’ – a Korean term for homeless people.

But things have returned to normal and construction resumed last year, with the resort now expected to open in June 2025.

A man has connected to North Korea’s internet to find out what you can really access on it.

We all know that the secretive country has very strict rules on what its citizens are allowed to know about the outside world.

So, it’s no surprise that North Koreans don’t have free access to the internet.

But what does the limited intranet there allow residents to see?

One man named Eric Parker decided to find out, uploading what he discovered to his YouTube channel.

In the video description, it read: “​​Connecting the North Korean OS, Red Star to the internet to surf the net, Kim Jong Un style.”

The YouTuber installed the operating system onto his laptop before he began browsing the internet.

Interestingly, Parker discovered that he could choose from four different locations – North Korea, Russia, and Osaka and Tokyo in Japan.

Loading up the system, he immediately noticed that it resembled “Mac OS”, adding, “I actually think they’ve done a really good job of the theming here”.

He decided to try to load up Google and remarked on the “magic” used to stop people from using the internet.

When he tried to look up his own YouTube channel, Parker was stopped by what appeared to be a “certificate error”.

When he searched for Wikipedia, he was faced with the same problem.

The YouTuber discovered just how difficult it is for North Koreans to access mainstream websites that most people visit daily.

Viewers shared their own reactions to the footage in the comment section, with one user writing: “Imagine if they find out that someone is using their OS on the other side of the planet.”

Another said: “I find it interesting that they themed it after MacOS. There’s no real reason that would be necessary, but they still spent the time to do it. They must really like the look haha.”

A third person posted: “Imagine if when you opened Google, the browser said ‘Kim Jong Un wants to know your location’.”

Another wrote: “The inclusion of two Japanese timezones in a very small list of others is eerie, as North Korea has a history of espionage in Japan.”

Although one person had their own theory about the location options, adding: “Japan has at least 1, possibly a couple, small area(s)/cit(-y)(-ies) that is/are loyal to North Korea. So maybe Japanese is for them.”

And a sixth user joked: “69 missed calls from Kim Jong Un.”