For over seven years, North Korean IT specialists have been secretly involved in the development of several significant decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, according to Taylor Monahan, a developer at MetaMask. Monahan emphasized that many protocols popular in the DeFi community have ties to North Korean programmers, stating, "The '7 years blockchain dev experience' on their resume is not a lie."
"Yuppppppp
Lots of DPRK IT Workers built the protocols you know and love, all the way back to defi summer..." — Tay 💖 (@tayvano_)
Among the projects linked to these North Korean individuals are well-known names like SushiSwap, Thorchain, and Yearn. Monahan's remarks followed a revelation from Tim Ahla, founder of the Solana aggregator Titan, who described an interview with an individual later identified as a member of the infamous Lazarus Group. Ahla noted that while the candidate appeared highly qualified on video calls, he declined to attend an in-person meeting, raising suspicions.
"He was extremely qualified... Later, his name appeared in a Lazarus leak," shared Ahla.
Concerns over North Korean cyber activities have intensified, particularly after the Drift Protocol suffered a $280 million hack attributed to North Korean hackers. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT reiterated the threats posed by the Lazarus Group, a designation for state-sponsored cyber actors from North Korea. He criticized the tendency to conflate their various tactics, describing them as "simple and primitive" compared to more sophisticated attacks carried out by other groups.
