To Catch a Thief: China’s Rise to Cyber Supremacy
Jul 7, 2026 · 1 hr 1 min · 10 segments
In the decade after Sony, North Korea learned something fundamental: Destructive cyberattacks make headlines. Financial cyberattacks make *money*. One year after Sony, North Korea pulled off one of…
Nicole PerlrothHost
Eric ChienGuest
Nick CarlsonGuest
Matt MuellerGuest
Rob JoyceGuest
Michael BarnhartGuest
Aaron LloydGuest
Julia HardyGuest
Adam MeyersGuest
Heidi WilderGuest
Ari RedbordGuest
Marcus HutchinsGuest
Ankit JosephGuest
Way back in January of 2015, North Korean attackers were creating personas, creating email accounts, and conducting online research about email addresses and Bangladesh Bank employees.
They started sending friendly job inquiries to the bank's employees, along with a link to a resume and cover letter.
They pretended they were a guy named Raza Alam, and they said, "I'm Raza Alam, and I'm extremely excited about the idea of becoming part of your company.
Instead of just displaying his resume on your screen, would actually begin running code on your system.
[upbeat music] And just like that, North Korea's hackers were inside the bank.
And this is critical, especially when you think about the North Korean IT workers lurking in our systems today.
They spent nearly a year mapping the bank's network, studying how the systems work together, hunting for the bank's connection to something called SWIFT.
SWIFT is the mechanism in which banks all over the world transfer money, but SWIFT itself doesn't transfer the money.
SWIFT is really a communications protocol, like a chat messaging system that allows banks to send messages to each other to say, "Hey, I wanna transfer 2 million from this account to this account." The banks then do that debiting and crediting.
So if I'm logged into my SWIFT account and I send you a message and say, "Please debit 2 million," you trust that what I'm doing is accurate and the truth, and I have vetted, for example, the company who's deciding to debit those amounts.
Most banks would have a separate room that would have their SWIFT terminal, so it's just a computer that had the SWIFT software on it, that messaging software.
You can imagine attacks where individuals would break in, get physical access to that terminal, and potentially they could send rogue SWIFT messages.
But equally as well, you could imagine hackers hacking into those computers, getting access to that SWIFT software, and sending messages that were rogue as well.
[upbeat music] Once you're on that SWIFT terminal, you can begin to send messages to say, "All this money that belongs to me, I want you, bank, to move it somewhere else." And instantly out it goes.
Way back in January of 2015, North Korean attackers were creating personas, creating email accounts, and conducting online research about email addresses and Bangladesh Bank employees.
They started sending friendly job inquiries to the bank's employees, along with a link to a resume and cover letter.
They pretended they were a guy named Raza Alam, and they said, "I'm Raza Alam, and I'm extremely excited about the idea of becoming part of your company.
Instead of just displaying his resume on your screen, would actually begin running code on your system.
[upbeat music] And just like that, North Korea's hackers were inside the bank.
And this is critical, especially when you think about the North Korean IT workers lurking in our systems today.
They spent nearly a year mapping the bank's network, studying how the systems work together, hunting for the bank's connection to something called SWIFT.
SWIFT is the mechanism in which banks all over the world transfer money, but SWIFT itself doesn't transfer the money.
SWIFT is really a communications protocol, like a chat messaging system that allows banks to send messages to each other to say, "Hey, I wanna transfer 2 million from this account to this account." The banks then do that debiting and crediting.
So if I'm logged into my SWIFT account and I send you a message and say, "Please debit 2 million," you trust that what I'm doing is accurate and the truth, and I have vetted, for example, the company who's deciding to debit those amounts.
Most banks would have a separate room that would have their SWIFT terminal, so it's just a computer that had the SWIFT software on it, that messaging software.
You can imagine attacks where individuals would break in, get physical access to that terminal, and potentially they could send rogue SWIFT messages.
But equally as well, you could imagine hackers hacking into those computers, getting access to that SWIFT software, and sending messages that were rogue as well.
[upbeat music] Once you're on that SWIFT terminal, you can begin to send messages to say, "All this money that belongs to me, I want you, bank, to move it somewhere else." And instantly out it goes.
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