ByNitish Singh-October 4, 2018.443 Figure 1 Photo Courtesy of Pixabay A report published by Us Security Company reported that North Korea has three major hackers. The responsibility for international cyber espionage rests with two of the hacking groups. North Korea has proved to be one of the strongest in the cyber-espionage world in the last four years. Security researchers from U.S .- based security firm FireEye have disclosed that North Korea has three major hacking groups operating. Two of them are notorious for cyber-espionage while the third is behind some of the biggest attacks in recent history on banks and financial institutions. The spy groups are called Temp. Hermit and Lazarus Group while financially motivated is Apt38. .444 Figure 2 Picture Courtesy of the first operation of FireEye Apt38 is from 2014. FireEye believes that the diminishing financial resources of North Korea have led the military state to bring in funds by hacking and other unorthodox methods. FireEye reported that banks and financial institutions were the major targets of Apt38 for crypto-currency exchanges. Apt38 hackers are globally responsible for attacks, including in countries such as Malaysia Poland Vietnam and other small countries. .445 Apt38 prefers to wait months before initiating subsequent attacks, and spends time on tracking and identification to establish target-specific tools. “Apt38 also takes steps to ensure that they remain undetected when performing their internal identification. On average we found that Apt38 persists within a target network for about 155 days with the longest time within a compromised system estimated to be 678 days (nearly two years). “It is expected that the group’s operation will continue in the future. However many of the future attempts are likely to be thwarted with advancements in technology. If the currency in North Korea continues to deteriorate the community will become more involved than ever before.