(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

North Korea wages war, digitally.

While much attention is on Pyongyang’s progress in developing nuclear weapons, North Korea has quietly deployed more than 6,000 hackers to finance the country’s operations.

Our reporters took a detailed look at the cyberprogram, which has faced almost no punishment from the West.

Estimating that cyberheists may bring the North as much as $1 billion a year — or a third of the value of the nation’s exports — a former British intelligence official summed up the threat:

“Because they are such a mix of the weird and absurd and medieval and highly sophisticated, people didn’t take it seriously. How can such an isolated, backward country have this capability? Well, how can such an isolated backward country have this nuclear ability?”