North Korean IT Workers Impersonating Americans To Land Jobs At Fortune 500 Companies To Fund Kim Jong Un's Weapons Program: Report

Thousands of North Korean IT workers have been found to be working undercover in Fortune 500 companies, with their earnings being used to fund Kim Jong Un‘s illicit weapons programs.

What Happened: These IT professionals have been using stolen or fabricated identities to gain employment in these companies, reported Fortune. The U.S. Treasury, State Department, and FBI estimate that this operation has been generating hundreds of millions annually since 2018.

The North Korean engineers are not only impersonating Americans but are also leveraging advanced AI to alter their appearances and voices. They are even managing to hold multiple jobs simultaneously, thereby increasing the amount of money funneled back to North Korea.

Harrison Leggio told the publication that nearly all the résumés he gets for roles at his crypto startup g8keep—about 95%—are actually from North Korean engineers pretending to be Americans.

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Michael Barnhart, an intelligence leader at Google Cloud, stated that these engineers are stationed in China and Russia, where they use AI to create impressive bios and apply for jobs in bulk.

Why It Matters: Despite attempts to disrupt this operation, cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike reported that North Korean IT workers were behind 304 incidents in 2024, and their activities increased during the latter half of the year. The firm predicts that these campaigns will continue in 2025, given their financial success.

This recent revelation is not an isolated incident. North Korean hackers were already leveraging AI to facilitate their cyber operations, targeting employees of global defense, cybersecurity, and cryptocurrency companies.

In 2024, the U.S. Justice Department accused an American woman and a Ukrainian man of being involved in a scheme that allegedly helped North Korea fund its nuclear weapons program. The scheme involved more than 300 U.S. companies hiring foreign nationals with North Korean connections for remote IT work.

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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.