Kim Jong Un Is Building Nuclear Weapons With $1 Billion Stolen By North Korean Hackers In 2018

Cybersecurity researchers the world over know that North Korea has a crack team of hackers it Nicknamed APT 38 (short for Advanced Persistent Threat) they're in everything from theft to malware.

And it seems they have a purpose to their thefts this time around.

According to a recent report by Wired APT 38 stole $1 billion from various banks and cryptocurrency exchanges last year. They worked by establishing fraudulent crypto offerings and targeted money exchanges. Whatever money they snagged, they funneled straight into the country's military.

Worst of all, all of that cash may have gone towards funding nuclear weapons, something North Korea has been after for a long time.

Until now, nations around the world have imposed sanctions on the war-hungry country, as well as restricted imports, in order to deny them the ability to fund nuclear weapons research. In order to counter that, the publication says their hackers are targeting banks with weak security, and scamming them in order to gain that funding.

"Security analysts are unanimous in assessing that the funds stolen by APT 38 - a significant percentage of North Korean GDP - are channeled into the DPRK's missile and nuclear development programs," an anonymous security expert told Wired.

Cybercrime has always been a big problem, but this makes things worse. Now, instead of people's livelihoods or identities on the line, it's the safety of the whole world.

"We need to ask ourselves," another anonymous security expert told Wired, "when North Korea tests their next missile, is it really okay that they paid for it with bitcoin?"