What a load of horseshit. From the referenced report:
"In 2016 we began observing actors we believe to be North Korean" - key phrase "we believe".
"Now, we may be witnessing a second wave of this campaign" - "may be".
The whole article is just fishing for connections with zero ties to anything solid. Even if they did connect two dots, we can now claim that a few people doing something is the entire North Korean regime? Pppplease.
How good are these guys, and what happens if... NK gets all internet access cut off from the rest of the world?
I've always been a little curious how North Korea is able to produce hackers that are competitive on a global scale. It's not only that an average North Korean would grow up with access to fewer resources compared to many countries, but you'd also think that the same information embargo used to keep the population in line would also compromise the ability of the best technical people to educate themselves. Extremely limited access to internet, current books, a creative community (either in-person or virtual), software, tooling, etc.
I guess the answer is the same as how the country is able to win gold medal at the Olympics [1] – money (and lots of it) sunk into state-sponsored training programs — but I'm a little surprised that it's effective. Even in the US, a school that would consistently produce A-grade hackers would be pretty hard to build.
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[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea_at_the_Olympics