North Korea has vastly expanded its use of the internet in ways that enable its leader, Kim Jong Un, to evade a “maximum pressure” U.S. sanctions campaign and turn to new forms of cybercrime to prop up his government, according to a new study.

The surge has a clear purpose, according to the report released Sunday by Recorded Future, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, group known for its deep examinations of how nations use digital weaponry: circumventing financial pressure and sanctions by the West. Over the past three years, the study concluded, North Korea has improved its ability to both steal and “mine” cryptocurrencies, hide its footprints in gaining technology for its nuclear program and cyberoperations, and use the internet for day-to-day control of its government.

“What this tells you is that our entire concept of how to control the North’s financial engagement with the world is based on an image of the North that is fixed in the past,” said Priscilla Moriuchi, a former National Security Agency analyst who directed the study and has long focused on North Korea and Iran. “They have succeeded at an easy-to-replicate model of how to move large amounts of money around the world, and do it in a way our sanctions do not touch.”

It also further complicates the Trump administration’s paralysis in dealing with the North. Sanctions have remained in place, though Trump does not like to talk about them, even as his personal diplomacy with Kim sputters.

An expected resumption of intercontinental ballistic missile tests, which North Korea appeared to threaten at the end of 2019, has not materialized. But even if the situation remains in a quiet stalemate, the report suggests that Kim is poised to take advantage: Just as he is continuing to invest in his nuclear program, he is also pouring resources into a cyberprogram that is both a potent weapon and a revenue generator.

Moriuchi, who left the National Security Agency in 2017, began tracking the internet use of the North Korean elite 2 1/2 years ago, a period that encompassed Trump’s confrontational approach to the North, the country’s missile launches and then the stalled diplomacy that has followed the president’s three meetings with Kim.