A spokesman for online retail giant Amazon has said it has blocked more than 1,800 job applications from suspected North Korean agents, the BBC reports.
The company’s chief security officer, Stephen Schmidt, wrote in a post on LinkedIn that North Koreans are trying to apply for remote IT jobs using stolen or fake identities. Schmidt said their goal is usually simple – to get a job, get paid and then send the money to North Korea to fund the regime’s weapons programs. This trend is seen across the internet technology industry, especially in the US.
US and South Korean authorities have also warned about online fraud by North Korean agents.
The number of North Korean job applications has increased by nearly a third in the past year. Schmidt said the agents typically work with people who run so-called
laptop farms – computers that are physically located in the United States but are controlled remotely
from another country. Amazon uses artificial intelligence tools and manual checks by staff to evaluate job applications.
Schmidt said the scammers’ strategy is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Agents are taking over unused LinkedIn accounts and then following real programmers to appear more trustworthy. An Amazon spokesman urged companies to report suspicious job applications to authorities. He also urged people to pay attention to nuances that indicate fraudulent job applications, such as incorrect phone number formats or discrepancies in education.
In June, the US government reported that it had uncovered 25 laptop farms run from North Korea. It also identified US citizens who had helped North Koreans. In July, an Arizona woman was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for helping set up a “laptop farm” that allowed North Koreans to apply for jobs at more than 300 companies. The US Department of Justice said that North Korea has so far made 17 million dollars from these illegal activities.
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