US allows vetted private firms to counter North Korean crypto theft

The US is allowing vetted private firms to target North Korean crypto theft. That is a notable shift for a fight that has mostly belonged to prosecutors, sanctions officials, and FBI agents. North Korean actors are estimated to have stolen over $2 billion in digital assets in 2025, according to Chainalysis. One incident, the Bybit breach, accounted for approximately $1.5 billion of that total. A government that has been busy The move toward private participation follows a stretch of aggressive enforcement from the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). Their main targets are North Korean state-linked hacking groups, most notably the Lazarus Group and APT38. Both are tied to a wide range of financial crimes, from large digital asset heists to fraudulent remote IT worker schemes. Those IT worker schemes deserve a moment of attention. North Korean operatives reportedly land remote tech jobs under false identities, and the wages reportedly flow back to Pyongyang’s weapons programs. In mid-October 2026, the DOJ carried out coordinated actions in Ohio and Texas under the name Operation Lonestar Roundup. The operation produced over 70 i...