Researchers in the field of security have discovered that three seemingly unrelated individuals—a venture financier, a recruiter from a large corporation, and a recently employed remote IT worker—were actually operatives for the North Korean dictatorship.
At Cyberwarcon, an annual conference in Washington DC centred around cyberthreats, security experts presented their latest assessment of the North Korean threat on Friday. The researchers expressed concern about a persistent effort by North Korean hackers to impersonate job applicants at multinational firms. Their goals were to gain trade secrets that would assist the weapons program of the North Korean leadership and make money for the regime. While evading a deluge of international sanctions, these swindlers have amassed billions of dollars’ worth of stolen cryptocurrencies over the previous decade, which they have used to finance the nation’s nuclear weapons program.
In a talk at Cyberwarcon, Microsoft security researcher James Elliott claimed that North Korean IT workers have penetrated “hundreds” of organisations worldwide using aliases and relying on middlemen in the United States to manage their company-issued computers and money so they can avoid the financial sanctions imposed on North Koreans.
Experts studying North Korea’s cyber capabilities describe the current threat as an amorphous collection of hacker gangs using diverse strategies to steal cryptocurrency. Because the country is already under sanctions, the regime is not at danger for its cyberattacks.
Microsoft has identified a gang of North Korean hackers as “Ruby Sleet.” These hackers targeted aerospace and defence industries in an effort to obtain trade secrets that could aid in the development of North Korea’s weaponry and navigation systems.
Another gang of North Korean hackers, “Sapphire Sleet,” was documented in a Microsoft blog post. They ran efforts to steal cryptocurrencies from people and businesses while pretending to be venture capitalists and recruiters. Following initial outreach or lure contact, the North Korean hackers would arrange a virtual meeting—one that was intentionally designed to load incorrectly, of course.
The imposter in the phoney VC scenario would next try to trick the victim into downloading malicious software that looked like a remedy for the malfunctioning virtual conference. In the fake-recruiter scheme, the imposter would trick potential employees into downloading and completing a skills test that was actually malicious software. The software can access bitcoin wallets and other files on the computer once it has been installed. According to Microsoft, the hackers made off with $10 million worth of cryptocurrencies in just six months.
North Korean hackers are engaging in a highly persistent and challenging campaign to gain remote work positions at large corporations, capitalising on the surge in remote work that started during the COVID-19 outbreak.
A “triple threat” exists, according to Microsoft, because North Korean IT workers can deceitfully get jobs with large corporations, fund the North Korean regime, and then steal intellectual property and trade secrets before threatening to expose them in an extortion scheme.
Only a small number of the hundreds of businesses that have unwittingly engaged a North Korean spy have claimed victim status. Earlier this year, security firm KnowBe4 said it had been deceived into recruiting a North Korean employee. However, the firm quickly discovered its mistake and disabled the employee’s remote access. KnowBe4 assured that no business data had been stolen.
Using Deception, North Korean IT Professionals Trick Businesses Into Employing Them
In an effort to project an air of professionalism, the average North Korean IT worker will set up a number of web profiles, such as one on LinkedIn and another on GitHub. With the use of artificial intelligence, the IT professional can create fictitious personas by altering their appearance or changing their voice.
Unbeknownst to the company, a facilitator is assigned the responsibility of building up farms of company-issued computers, and once recruited, the laptops are shipped to this address in the US. The facilitator also sets up remote access software on the laptops, so the North Korean spies may connect in from anywhere in the world without their actual whereabouts being revealed.
It is becoming more difficult for firms to detect potential North Korean spies in their networks, according to Microsoft, who has also noticed the country’s spies operating out of Russia and China, two close friends of the renegade nation.
The lucky break came when Microsoft received an accidentally public repository belonging to a North Korean IT worker, according to Elliott of Microsoft. The repository contained spreadsheets and documents that detailed the campaign, including the dossiers of false identities and resumes used by the North Korean IT workers to get hired, as well as the amount of money made during the operation. Elliott said the repos had the “entire playbooks” that hackers needed to commit identity theft.
Additionally, the North Koreans would employ tactics that could reveal their deceitfulness, such as swiftly validating the LinkedIn accounts associated with their fraudulent identities upon obtaining a work email address. This would grant the accounts the appearance of greater validity.
Researchers provided more examples of the hackers’ carelessness that shed light on their operations.
Researchers Hoi Myong and SttyK were able to identify North Korean IT workers in part by contacting them and finding flaws in their well manufactured phoney identities.
As part of their Cyberwarcon presentation, Myong and SttyK detailed their conversation with a possible North Korean IT worker who gave the impression of being Japanese but really made grammatical errors—for example, by using terms and phrases that don’t exist in Japanese—in their communications. Another problem with the IT worker’s identity was that they claimed to have a Chinese bank account, yet their IP address put them in Russia.
In reaction to the IT workers scheme, the United States government has sanctioned organisations related to North Korea in the past few years. The FBI has issued a warning about the prevalence of “deepfakes,” or images created by artificial intelligence and typically based on stolen identities, as a means for criminals to secure employment in the technology sector. In 2024, numerous persons were charged by U.S. prosecutors with operating the laptop farms that enable sanction evasion.
However, the researchers stressed that businesses should also improve their screening processes for potential employees.
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“They’re not going away,” Elliott declared. “You can expect them to remain for quite some time.”
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