Amazon’s security team has uncovered and prevented more than 1,800 attempts by North Koreans to gain employment at the company under false pretenses since April 2024.
Bloomberg reports that Amazon Chief Security Officer Stephen Schmidt has revealed that the company’s security personnel have detected and foiled over 1,800 attempts by North Koreans to infiltrate the company as IT workers since April 2024. Speaking at a security event held at Amazon’s New York City office last week, Schmidt noted that the number of such attempts has been increasing by an average of 27 percent quarter-over-quarter this year.
The attempts are part of a growing trend in recent years of North Koreans circumventing strict sanctions imposed by the United States and other countries to fraudulently secure remote jobs, particularly in the IT sector. The objective of this scheme is to raise funds for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and its weapons programs, along with spying on western countries and potentially hacking systems. This pattern of imposters has raised significant legal and security concerns for businesses of all sizes.
While Amazon did not directly hire any North Koreans, the company did ship a laptop to a contractor who was later discovered to be a proxy for North Korea. Schmidt emphasized that this incident should serve as a warning to other companies. “If we hadn’t been looking for the DPRK workers,” he stated, “we would not have found them.”
Amazon’s security staff began closely examining a systems administrator hired by an outside firm after monitoring systems on the individual’s Amazon laptop detected unusual behavior. Upon investigation, it was discovered that the machine was being remotely controlled, with traffic traced back to China. Further analysis of the person’s application and resume revealed that they had used the same tactics as other North Koreans to secure the job.
Schmidt explained that these imposters often follow a similar pattern, claiming to have studied at the same schools and worked at the same companies, typically overseas consulting firms that are difficult to verify from the United States. Other indicators include struggling with American idioms and the proper use of English articles like “the.”
Breitbart News previously reported that hostile countries including North Korea entangle Americans into their schemes by convincing them to serve as the “American face” of their operations. This is the case for Christina Chapman, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges after running a laptop farm for North Korean agents:
Chapman’s involvement began in March 2020 when she received a LinkedIn message asking her to “be the U.S. face” for a company that secured jobs for overseas IT workers. Unbeknownst to her, the workers were North Koreans using stolen U.S. identities. Chapman’s role was to provide an American cover, accepting deliveries of company laptops, setting up online connections, and facilitating paychecks. She operated a “laptop farm” from her home in Arizona, at one point housing over 90 computers used by the North Korean workers.
The FBI estimates that this scam involves thousands of North Korean workers and brings in hundreds of millions of dollars annually for the cash-strapped country. The workers, typically technology specialists trained in North Korea, seek employment with Western companies while hiding their true identities and locations. They often enlist the help of U.S. citizens to pass “liveness checks” and create legitimate accounts on freelance platforms.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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