North Korea has been working on artificial intelligence for almost 30 years, and a new report from South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS) says those efforts could make the country’s crypto-theft operations even stronger and more automated.
Researchers found that North Korea is using banned NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2700 graphics cards to power its AI work. These chips help speed up tasks like pattern recognition, voice processing, and data analysis — abilities that can be used to improve hacking tools and cyberattacks.
The report comes as crypto hacks hit $172.5 million in November 2025, with most losses coming from code flaws, which totaled $130.2 million.
Kim Min Jung, who leads the Advanced Technology Strategy Center at INSS, warned that closely watching North Korea’s AI development is now more urgent than ever. She said governments need strong policies to prevent these technologies from being used for military or cybercrime purposes.
AI research focuses on facial and voice tech
North Korea expanded its AI research programs through new institutions and homegrown algorithms starting in the 2010s. Recent studies from the National Academy of Sciences and Pyongyang Lee University examined facial recognition, multi-object tracking, lightweight voice synthesis, and even accent detection.
These projects aim to make AI models more accurate while running on limited hardware — something North Korea often faces due to sanctions.
If applied to cyber operations, these tools could help identify targets, predict their movements, and make social-engineering attacks far more convincing. Some of the studies even used the RTX 2700 GPU, which the U.S. Treasury has officially banned from export to North Korea.
AI could take crypto theft to an industrial level
According to INSS, North Korea could use AI to create deepfakes, hide digital footprints, and massively scale up crypto theft with automated attacks. High-performance AI tools could allow a small team of hackers to run operations at the pace of a large, industrial-level cyber unit.
Research into multi-person tracking could also be adapted into real-time surveillance systems when combined with cameras, drones, or other monitoring tools.
The report also highlights growing cooperation between North Korea, China, and Russia since the Ukraine war — a factor that could speed up North Korea’s AI development even further.
In total, the crypto industry lost $172.5 million in November 2025, though about $45.5 million was frozen or recovered. Code vulnerabilities and wallet compromises were responsible for most of the incidents.
