Is North Korea’s Hacker Army “Just A Bunch Of Poor, Low-Paid Laborers”?

With the regime in Pyongyang being strapped for cash under tougher international sanctions, its 1,700 state-sponsored hackers are said to increasingly choose money over military and political targets. North Korea has been linked to the WannaCry ransomware attack, stolen funds from South Korean cryptocurrency exchange or the cyber heist of the Bangladesh Central Bank, just to mention some of the recent happenings. But the everyday life of a North Korean state-sponsored hacker might be much less glamorous. 

Bloomberg Businessweek managed to talk to a defector, who was bringing in around $100,000 a year for the regime. Although officially he was moved to China to conduct software research, he spent his 15-hour work day making pirated versions of commercial software, hacking gambling sites and creating bots to build up valuable characters in online games. Working from a cubicle and sleeping in bunks, from his account, it seems that North Korea’s hacker army was “just a bunch of poor, low-paid labourers.”

"Unlike their counterparts elsewhere, who might seek to expose security vulnerabilities, steal corporate and state secrets, or simply sow chaos, North Korean hackers have a singular purpose: to earn money for the country, currently squeezed by harsh international sanctions for its rogue nuclear program," writes Bloomberg.

But is this so? Although the revealing confessions about hackers' working conditions and tasks might point otherwise, I still think North Korea's cyber power should not be underestimated. The defector's field was just one of four of Pyongyang's hacker specialities: he also recalled meeting other hackers who handled military espionage assignments and were "staunchly loyal to the regime." These are the guys we should fear.