Fleets of laptops run from US residences gave appearance workers were in the US.
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5 plead guilty to laptop farm and ID theft scheme to land North Koreans US IT jobs
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Only $2.2 million in revenue generate for the DPRK regime? Looks like a small operation, not likely to fund many weapons.
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It's still fraud - wire fraud, identity fraud - maybe some tax crime. Especially the people in the US facilitating things.
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It's always surprising to me how little money will convince people to participate in major crimes.
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Humans are weird like that, we regularly compartmentalize choices in a way that obscures the true risk/reward ratio.
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Also curious as to whether any of them also stole sensitive data, placed malware in their employers’ networks, etc.
Seems like a way to potentially do that while also making some bucks.
Seems like a way to potentially do that while also making some bucks.
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You should check out how much money gets USA politicians to do the same, though it’s legal for them thanks to the Supreme Court of USA.
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lol — the scale of the crime here is too small potatoes. Like my grandpa sagely advised: Don’t steal, but if you do steal, steal big. When you steal big you can launder the assets in schemes and financial shenanigans that shield a big chunk from disgorgement
Edit: Also, too, note the demographics of the perps. Probably way too much melanin for Trump’s pardon panel.
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Really?
They're looking for useful IP and intelligence about the places they're employed by. They're disrupting the places they work for, or spreading disruption and malware and spyware among other places to get information.
If you think this is about raising money for the fucking North Koreans, you're deluded. This is all about making sure China gets what it asks for. China works through proxies almost all the time. NK is one of their favorite tools for Western espionage. And what NK gets from China is worth a a lot more to them than just money.
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You should see the MLB pitchers who just gave up 8 figure salaries and probably their freedom for $5000 a pitch.
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I feel like this is the real reason so many companies have leaned hard into Return to Office.
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Fraud involves depriving a rightful owner of something via deception, and theft is on that naughty list. Burglary and robbery are also different crimes usually involving "stealing" something.
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Literally had this on while I read this post. Trevor May puts out good shit!
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcC-upTOQQ8
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That was definitely written/approved by/insisted upon by lawyers. I used to work with Legal at my last job and got used to always future proofing statements with qualifiers like "at least" or "more than" or "to date" in case the numbers changed later. And Legal likely also insisted on saying "US Person" which is understood to mean either a citizen or a permanent resident (green card) vs a "US Resident" which could also include someone here on a student or work visa, etc.
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Isn't the past tense of plead "pled", not pleaded?
Also "North APT38" should maybe just be APT38
Also "North APT38" should maybe just be APT38
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I am amazed that companies can hire someone and not even know who they are and what country they live in. Contractors maybe, but employees?
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There’s an interesting podcast from BBC World Service called Cyber Hack and in the first two series they covered the North Korean group Lazarus (series 3 is Evil Corp) and it’s not just getting a job for a US company for a few mil it’s way bigger scale of operations.. the podcast is slightly over dramatised for my liking but not stopped me listening to it.. it’s been good
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xtvg9
*edit to make it make more sense!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/brand/w13xtvg9
*edit to make it make more sense!
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No, that’s about managers showing workers who’s in charge, with a side benefit of getting people to quit so they don’t have to take the heat for layoffs due to over-hiring.
This will be used to justify limiting remote work but they could get the same benefits with in-person interviews and other moves like that. Those measures, however, don’t have the benefit of prominently reinforcing social hierarchy so they’re not going to be popular with the executive class.
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Both are valid. But as stated by the internet, "pleaded" is more formal.
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Either / both are considered correct, but pleaded is widely regarded as being more formal so is usually the go to for describing legal context.
If only there were ways of quickly checking these things online! /s
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Yep, like:
The ad copy would be just another form of the requesting for assistance with the re-mailing jobs that scammers use all the time.
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I can only assume that this is why they needed actual human liaisons in the US to pull it off. It mentioned that a couple of them went in for drug testing, etc. That said, I do share your incredulity. As others have pointed out, such a small payout for such a life-altering crime.
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The whole point of the scheme that these people were convicted of was to provide a plausible point of contact inside the US, and help obscure the identities of the workers being employed. And the workers had a nation state assisting them behind the scenes that possibly could have provided "genuine" government issued photo IDs and/or SSN (although one of the convicted was charged with identity theft).
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The networks and IT systems of all of the companies that employed these NK IT workers are now likely to be compromised. The NKs may not even have done anything bad yet, and simply injected fake users that they could use as a backdoor at a later date. In cleaning up after the fact, I'm not even sure you could prove that you fully purged your systems of any NK work.
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I'm guessing this is meant to say "North Korean APT38 actors"?
Stealing/compromising the identities of US citizens and getting access to dozens of potentially sensitive companies' internal docs/data is the real prize. This could just be a test or a decentralized pod. There could be a hundred other pods of 3-5 people orchestrating the same scheme out there still operating, for all we know (unlikely, but still). Then we'd be talking about hundreds of US citizens' identities, hundreds of companies, and potentially billions of dollars.
It also may not be for weapons, but rather for food/medicine or other things useful for the NK government/military to exert soft influence domestically. They have a hundred irons in the proverbial fire when it comes to funding via illicit means.
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Makes me wonder if that's how some of the endless "make money easy at home with your computer" scams might go. I have always seen those and immediately think "easy money = too good to be true = scam"
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Having volunteered to help people at the edges of society, some of whom are months behind on rent, utilities, and trying to figure out how to eat day to day. A couple of hundred dollars can suddenly look like a massive windfall when your stomach is eating you from the inside.
Now imagine latent health issues with no access to any medical care, perhaps a dependent, a aging family member.
We could erase poverty in the US with proper taxes and social safety nets. I wonder how much we would save in the direct and indirect benefits of keeping people away from crime and out of the emergency room?
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That's not true! Bribery remains as illegal as ever.
But if a politician just happens to do something that benefits you, and you just happen to buy them, say, a giant $250,000 motorcoach, and you pinky promise that it had nothing to do with the favor they did for you, then that's not bribery. That's just gift giving between friends.
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Right, the DPRK just randomly sought out an active member of the US military. Just a typical cold call.
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