Dozens of Fortune 100 Companies Have Unwittingly Hired North Korean IT Workers

'Dozens of Fortune 100 organizations' have unknowingly hired North Korean IT workers using fake identities, generating revenue for the North Korean government while potentially compromising tech firms, according to Google's Mandiant unit. 'In a report published Monday, researchers describe a common scheme orchestrated by the group it tracks as UNC5267, which has been active since 2018,' reports The Record. 'In most cases, the IT workers 'consist of individuals sent by the North Korean government to live primarily in China and Russia, with smaller numbers in Africa and Southeast Asia.'' From the report: The remote workers 'often gain elevated access to modify code and administer network systems,' Mandiant found, warning of the downstream effects of allowing malicious actors into a company's inner sanctum. Using stolen identities or fictitious ones, the actors are generally hired as remote contractors. Mandiant has seen the workers hired in a variety of complex roles across several sectors. Some workers are employed at multiple companies, bringing in several salaries each month. The tactic is facilitated by someone based in the U.S. who runs a laptop farm where workers' laptops are sent. Remote technology is installed on the laptops, allowing the North Koreans to log in and conduct their work from China or Russia.

Workers typically asked for their work laptops to be sent to different addresses than those listed on their resumes, raising the suspicions of companies. Mandiant said it found evidence that the laptops at these farms are connected to a 'keyboard video mouse' device or multiple remote management tools including LogMeIn, GoToMeeting, Chrome Remote Desktop, AnyDesk, TeamViewer and others. 'Feedback from team members and managers who spoke with Mandiant during investigations consistently highlighted behavior patterns, such as reluctance to engage in video communication and below-average work quality exhibited by the DPRK IT worker remotely operating the laptops,' Mandiant reported.

In several incident response engagements, Mandiant found the workers used the same resumes that had links to fabricated software engineer profiles hosted on Netlify, a platform often used for quickly creating and deploying websites. Many of the resumes and profiles included poor English and other clues indicating the actor was not based in the U.S. One characteristic repeatedly seen was the use of U.S-based addresses accompanied by education credentials from universities outside of North America, frequently in countries such as Singapore, Japan or Hong Kong. Companies, according to Mandiant, typically don't verify credentials from universities overseas. Further reading: How Not To Hire a North Korean IT Spy

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