Banned Nvidia GPUs Fuel Pyongyang’s Crypto Hacking Operations
Recent analysis indicates North Korea has been deploying prohibited Nvidia GPUs to bolster illicit operations targeting digital assets. Pyongyang’s state-backed AI work, reportedly built up since the late 1990s with strengths in pattern recognition, speech processing and data optimization, now pairs with high-performance GPUs to train models for wallet targeting, transaction analysis and automated phishing campaigns.
The development heightens enforcement and security challenges: sanctions and export controls are harder to police when advanced hardware is diverted, and exchanges, custodians and DeFi projects face increased pressure to strengthen monitoring and recovery controls. Experts say the trend exposes gaps in supply-chain controls and underscores the need for closer vendor cooperation, improved hardware tracing and more sophisticated blockchain analytics to limit illicit crypto flows.