North Korea's elite hackers turned on their own government – and got caught

Company Blog For HomeFor BusinessFor Partners Consumer Insights Labs Business Insights Industry News 2 min read North Korea's elite hackers turned on their own government — and got caught Graham CLULEY July 30, 2026

For years, North Korea's state-trained hackers have been one of the world's most prolific robbers of banks - stealing huge sums of money from foreign financial instituions, draining cryptocurrency exchanges of billions, and funnelling the proceeds into the country's weapons programme.

But now, in a remarkable twist, some of the same elite hackers appear to have decided to rob their own government instead. And, it doesn't sound as if it has ended that well for them.

According to a report by Daily NK, which specialises in reporting on the internal affairs of North Korea, the country's National Intelligence Agency arrested a hacking ring on 12 July after uncovering a sophisticated scheme to steal from the Chosun Central Bank and the Foreign Trade Bank - the two institutions sitting at the very heart of North Korea's financial system.

The ringleaders of the group are said to be discharged veterans from a cyber operations unit under North Korea's Reconnaissance and Intelligence General Bureau. That is the same shadowy military intelligence agency that runs the Lazarus Group, the hackers responsible for stealing billions from foreign banks and cryptocurrency exchanges over the past decade.

This article was aggregated automatically by CyberWire Daily's newsfeed engine. Original reporting: www.bitdefender.com.