Pyongyang was learning that cyberattacks were a far easier way to get around sanctions than North Korea’s usual methods of counterfeiting and illicit wildlife trafficking. North Korea’s hackers had been caught—but never punished—for major cyber heists at banks in the Philippines, Vietnam, and at the Bangladesh Central Bank, where they’d made a $1 billion transfer request from the New York Federal Bank. Only a spelling error (they’d misspelled foundation as “fandation”) had kept bankers from transferring the full billion, but they’d still made off with $81 million, among the largest bank heists
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