Re: Thousands of remote IT workers sent wages to North Korea to help fund weapons program, FBI says

[Biden blunders]

Lou Bricano <l...@cap.con> wrote in
news:_QS%M.144295$HwD9....@fx11.iad:

> On 10/30/2023 9:25 AM, Lee wrote:
>>
>> I wear dresses and wink at men.
>>
> I do the sme thing at truck stops.
>

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Thousands of information technology workers contracting
with U.S. companies have for years secretly sent millions of dollars of
their wages to North Korea for use in its ballistic missile program, FBI
and Department of Justice officials said.

The Justice Department said Wednesday that IT workers dispatched and
contracted by North Korea to work remotely with companies in St. Louis and
elsewhere in the U.S. have been using false identities to get the jobs.
The money they earned was funneled to the North Korean weapons program,
FBI leaders said at a news conference in St. Louis.

Court documents allege that North Korea’s government dispatched thousands
of skilled IT workers to live primarily in China and Russia with the goal
of deceiving businesses from the U.S. and elsewhere into hiring them as
freelance remote employees. The workers used various techniques to make it
look like they were working in the U.S., including paying Americans to use
their home Wi-Fi connections, said Jay Greenberg, special agent in charge
of the St. Louis FBI office.

Greenberg said any company that hired freelance IT workers “more than
likely” hired someone participating in the scheme. An FBI spokeswoman said
Thursday that the North Koreans contracted with companies across the U.S.
and in some other countries.

“We can tell you that there are thousands of North Korea IT workers that
are part of this,” spokeswoman Rebecca Wu said.

Federal authorities announced the seizure of $1.5 million and 17 domain
names as part of the investigation, which is ongoing.

FBI officials said the scheme is so prevalent that companies must be extra
vigilant in verifying whom they are hiring, including requiring
interviewees to at least be seen via video.

“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,” Greenberg said in a news release.

The IT workers generated millions of dollars a year in their wages to
benefit North Korea’s weapons programs. In some instances, the North
Korean workers also infiltrated computer networks and stole information
from the companies that hired them, the Justice Department said. They also
maintained access for future hacking and extortion schemes, the agency
said.

Officials didn’t name the companies that unknowingly hired North Korean
workers, say when the practice began, or elaborate on how investigators
became aware of it. But federal authorities have been aware of the scheme
for some time.

In May 2022, the State Department, Department of the Treasury, and the FBI
issued an advisory warning of attempts by North Koreans “to obtain
employment while posing as non-North Korean nationals.” The advisory noted
that in recent years, the regime of Kim Jong Un “has placed increased
focus on education and training” in IT-related subjects.

John Hultquist, the head of threat intelligence at the cybersecurity firm
Mandiant, said North Korea’s use of IT freelancers to help fund the
weapons program has been in play for more than a decade, but the effort
got a boost from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think the post-COVID world has created a lot more opportunity for them
because freelancing and remote hiring are a far more natural part of the
business than they were in the past,” Hultquist said.

North Korea also uses workers in other fields to funnel money back for the
weapons program, Hultquist said, but higher pay for tech workers provides
a more lucrative resource.

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula are high as North Korea has test-fired
more than 100 missiles since the start of 2022 and the U.S. has expanded
its military exercises with its Asian allies, in tit-for-tat responses.

The Justice Department in recent years has sought to expose and disrupt a
broad variety of criminal schemes aimed at bolstering the North Korean
regime, including its nuclear weapons program.

In 2016, for instance, four Chinese nationals and a trading company were
charged in the U.S. with using front companies to evade sanctions
targeting North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistics initiatives.

Two years ago, the Justice Department charged three North Korean computer
programmers and members of the government’s military intelligence agency
in a broad range of global hacks that officials say were carried out at
the behest of the regime. Law enforcement officials said at the time that
the prosecution highlighted the profit-driven motive behind North Korea’s
criminal hacking, a contrast from other adversarial nations like Russia,
China and Iran that are generally more interested in espionage,
intellectual property theft or even disrupting democracy.

In September, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for an exponential
increase in production of nuclear weapons and for his country to play a
larger role in a coalition of nations confronting the United States in a
“new Cold War,” state media said.

In February, United Nations experts said that North Korean hackers working
for the government stole record-breaking virtual assets last year
estimated to be worth between $630 million and more than $1 billion. The
panel of experts said in a report that the hackers used increasingly
sophisticated techniques to gain access to digital networks involved in
cyberfinance, and to steal information that could be useful in North
Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs from governments,
individuals and companies.

https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-weapons-program-it-workers-
f3df7c120522b0581db5c0b9682ebc9b