US tech giant Amazon said it has blocked more than 1,800 North Koreans from joining the company, as Pyongyang sends large numbers of information technology (IT) workers overseas to earn and launder funds.
In a post on LinkedIn, Amazon chief security officer Stephen Schmidt last week said that North Korean workers had been “attempting to secure remote IT jobs with companies worldwide, particularly in the US.”
He said the firm had seen about a one-third rise in applications by North Koreans in the past year.
Photo: Reuters
North Koreans typically use “laptop farms” — a computer in the US operated remotely from outside the country, he said.
He said the problem was not specific to Amazon and “is likely happening at scale across the industry.”
Tell-tale signs of North Korean workers included wrongly formatted phone numbers and dodgy academic credentials, Schmidt said.
In July, a woman in Arizona was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for running a laptop farm helping North Korean IT workers secure remote jobs at more than 300 US companies.
The scheme generated more than US$17 million in revenue for her and North Korea, officials said.
Last year, Seoul’s intelligence agency said that North Korean operatives had used LinkedIn to pose as recruiters and approach South Koreans working at defense firms to obtain information on their technologies.
“North Korea is actively training cyberpersonnel and infiltrating key locations worldwide,” Korea Institute for National Unification analyst Hong Min said.
“Given Amazon’s business nature, the motive seems largely economic, with a high likelihood that the operation was planned to steal financial assets,” he added.
North Korea’s cyberwarfare program dates back to at least the mid-1990s.
It has since grown into a 6,000-strong cyberunit known as Bureau 121, which operates from several countries, a 2020 US military report said.
Last month, Washington announced sanctions on eight people accused of being “state-sponsored hackers,” whose illicit operations were conducted “to fund the regime’s nuclear weapons program” by stealing and laundering money.
The US Department of the Treasury has accused North Korea-affiliated cybercriminals of stealing more than US$3 billion over the past three years, primarily in cryptocurrency.
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