Lazarus Group: The State Accused of Hacking Banks to Survive

Ten o'clock at night in Dhaka. February 2016. The central bank of an entire nation is closing for the weekend - and far away, according to US and UN investigators, someone is already inside its network, quietly trying to move almost a billion dollars out the door. Episode 1 of Cyber Wars is the story of Lazarus Group - the name Western governments give to a hacking operation that US prosecutors allege is not a criminal gang for hire, but a wing of a nation-state built to steal. Everything in this episode about North Korea and the one individual publicly charged - a programmer the US Department of Justice names as Park Jin Hyok - is an allegation drawn from official sources. Under American law those charges are accusations, and the accused is presumed innocent unless proven guilty in court. In this episode: the 2016 Bangladesh Bank heist, where attackers allegedly used genuine SWIFT credentials to send thirty-five payment instructions and nearly drained nine hundred and fifty-one million dollars - stopped, in the end, by a typo and a lucky street name; the 2014 Sony Pictures attack, which the US government publicly attributed to North Korea; WannaCry, the self-spreading ransomware that hit more than two hundred thousand computers across roughly a hundred and fifty countries in a single day and crippled hospitals; the 2018 DOJ complaint and the US Treasury sanctions; and the 2022 Ronin Network crypto theft of over six hundred million dollars, which the FBI publicly attributed to the group. Finally, the uncomfortable question the whole episode circles: according to a UN Panel of Experts, why a sanctioned, isolated state might turn hacking into a survival strategy. This is a documentary about the history of state-linked cybercrime, framed throughout as allegation and attributed to official record - not a verdict, and not security or investment advice. Full episode: https://empire-ops.com/niels - Next time on Cyber Wars: the cyber front of the war between Ukraine and Russia - the power grid, the wipers timed to the tanks, and the first conflict where the fighting online was inseparable from the fighting on the ground. Follow the channel so you do not miss it. More from the channel: https://empire-ops.com/niels Sources: US Department of Justice 2018 criminal complaint (Park Jin Hyok); US Treasury / OFAC sanctions designations (2018 and the 2022 Ethereum address listing); the FBI's 2022 public attribution of the Ronin Network theft; CISA joint cybersecurity advisories; and the reports of the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea. Disputed or partial figures (amounts recovered, exact totals) are given as ranges and flagged in the narration where sources differ. #LazarusGroup #CyberWars #Cybersecurity #NorthKorea #Hacking