The Department of Justice (DOJ) is cracking down on information technology employees in North Korea accused of running an online scheme designed to fund the authoritarian regime’s weapons program.
Authorities seized 17 website domains allegedly used by North Korean tech workers to defraud American businesses, evade sanctions and provide funding to North Korean weapons development, the DOJ said in a press release. (RELATED: Hamas May Have Used North Korean Weapons During Israel Terror Attack: REPORTS)
FBI says North Korea deployed thousands of IT workers to get remote jobs in US with fake IDs https://t.co/BxNbMPaqdq
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“The seizures announced today protect U.S. companies from being infiltrated with North Korean computer code and help ensure that American businesses are not used to finance that regime’s weapons program,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DOJ National Security Division.
“The Department of Justice is committed to working with private sector partners to protect U.S. business from this kind of fraud, to enhance our collective cybersecurity and to disrupt the funds fueling North Korean missiles.”
The North Korean government allegedly sent tech workers to live abroad, primarily in China and Russia, to trick American businesses into hiring them for freelance jobs to generate revenue for its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program, previous court filings show.
In order to hide their identities, North Korean tech employees designed websites to mimic legitimate U.S. tech businesses and hide their identity when applying for remote work, according to court documents. The DOJ seized an estimated $1.5 million of the revenue in earlier court-authorized seizures that were previously sealed.
U.S. and South Korean authorities issued an updated public service announcement Wednesday warning the private sector and international community of the scheme and how to spot potential red flags. State Department and South Korean officials held a symposium in May related to countering the fraudulent activity from the North Korean tech industry.
“The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has flooded the global marketplace with ill-intentioned information technology workers to indirectly fund its ballistic missile program. The seizing of these fraudulent domains helps protect companies from unknowingly hiring these bad actors and potentially damaging their business,” said FBI special agent Jay Greenberg, who is in charge of the St. Louis division.
“This scheme is so prevalent that companies must be vigilant to verify whom they’re hiring. At a minimum, the FBI recommends that employers take additional proactive steps with remote IT workers to make it harder for bad actors to hide their identities. Without due diligence, companies risk losing money or being compromised by insider threats they unknowingly invited inside their systems.”