Nearly 30 years have been dedicated by North Korea to cultivating artificial intelligence functionalities that might hasten digital asset larceny operations, pursuant to an assessment published by South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy.
Prohibited NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2700 visual processors were uncovered by investigators as being employed by Pyongyang to energize AI exploration centered on form identification, vocal analysis, and data refinement.
These discoveries surface as digital asset intrusions aggregated $172.5 million in November 2025, with $130.2 million in deficits being attributed to code flaws.
A cautionary advisory was issued by Kim Min Jung, who directs the Advanced Technology Strategy Center at INSS, cautioning that “meticulous oversight of North Korea’s AI exploration inclinations and regulatory countermeasures to curtail the military and digital asset misappropriation of associated proficiencies are immediately requisite.”
AI Research Focuses on Facial Recognition and Voice Synthesis
Artificial intelligence proficiencies have been fortified by North Korea through enlarged scholastic centers and internally engineered mechanisms commencing from the 2010s.
This year’s academic endeavors by the National Academy of Sciences’ Mathematical Research Institute and Pyongyang Lee University encompassed visual identification, multiple-object trajectory monitoring, compact auditory replication, and dialect distinguishing.
Initiatives to enhance both precision and processing swiftness within restricted computational settings are demonstrated by the exploration.
Target individuation, locomotion trajectory forecasting, and improved efficacy in severing command transmissions or perpetrating social manipulation intrusions are enabled by these proficiencies.
It was cautioned by the INSS disclosure that artificial intelligence functionalities might be leveraged for synthetic media fabrication, discovery circumventing, and enhanced digital asset misappropriation.
AI Automation Could Push Crypto Theft to Industrial Scale
“Utilizing high-performance AI computational resources could exponentially increase attack and theft attempts per unit time, enabling a small number of personnel to conduct operations with efficiency and precision comparable to industrial-scale efforts,”
the report stated.
Multi-individual trajectory exploration could be broadened into live monitoring systems when integrated with closed-circuit television or aerial drone assessment.
Cooperation between North Korea, China, and Russia subsequent to the Ukraine conflict is a determinant that might hasten practical artificial intelligence utilization. Continuous oversight of North Korea’s AI implementations in the military, espionage, and digital spheres was underlined by the disclosure.
Information sourced from CertiK Alert indicates that digital asset impairments attained $172.5 million in November 2025, with roughly $45.5 million being immobilized or repatriated. Deficiencies in programming and compromises of electronic wallets comprised the preponderance of occurrences.
