Researcher ‘Lives’ Among North Korean Hackers, Discovers 1,640 Victims

A Greek security researcher reportedly spent 22 months inside North Korean hacking servers. He came out with a victim list of 1,640 organizations in 57 countries.

Vangelis Stykas is chief technology officer at security firm Kumio. He presented the findings this week at Black Hat in Las Vegas.

How the Hunters Became the Hunted

Stykas turned the usual order around. He worked his way into the command-and-control servers the crews use to run their malware.

In some cases he landed on their personal computers. The hackers had infected those machines themselves.

Then he simply stayed. For nearly two years he watched them work and logged each new victim as it appeared.

He pulled roughly five terabytes of data. It held developer keys, private source code, and the crews' own Slack and Discord messages.

That access is why the count is firm. Most threat reports estimate victims from the outside.

This one counted them from the attackers' own files. Of the 1,640 organizations, Stykas rates 700 to 800 as seriously breached.

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