Lazarus Group – The Increasingly Infamous North Korean Hackers

In modern conflict, the lines between organized crime, espionage, and cyber warfare are extremely blurred. In large part, this is because different nation-states’ cyber operations infrastructure is designed with innate plausible deniability. Another major factor is that many of the same tactics and “weapons” utilized in petty cybercrime are just as effective when engaging in cyber warfare. A rising threat actor in this space is the DPRK (North Korea). In the past decade, the authoritarian regime’s most famous cyber operations have been attributed to state sponsored entities collectively designated “Lazarus Group”. While often having varying success, Lazarus Group have a unique profile-with targets ranging from movie studios, to massive crypto wallets, to healthcare infrastructure.

Before getting started with this article, I just wanted to give credit to the massive amount of work done by investigative tech journalist, Geoff White (Opens in a new window). Without his extensive work, this article just wouldn’t be possible. Buy his books (Opens in a new window). Listen to his podcasts (Opens in a new window). Read his articles (Opens in a new window).