North Korean operators are heavily utilizing commercial AI tools to automate and meticulously plan high-stakes heists. A security researcher who spent nearly two years quietly monitoring North Korean hacking operations dropped a bombshell at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. North Korean hackers’ bait: Fake job offersThe scam itself was surprisingly simple: they lure software developers with lucrative fake job offers and trick them into running a coding test that installs malware. Separate investigations by Google’s threat team also revealed North Korean hackers UNC2970 using tools like Gemini to research targets and map out high-paying job roles in defense and tech. According to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, North Korean groups are responsible for about 76% of all stolen crypto in April, totaling up to roughly $577 million extracted from just two massive exploits.