North Korea’s Remote Worker Scam: A Tech Industry Trojan Horse
Hello everyone. Today we’re diving into something so infuriating it makes microtransactions in full-priced games look almost forgivable. It’s the sort of tale where politics, cybercrime, and the tech industry all shake hands in a dark alley and decide to mug you together – and yes, the usual suspects in the trench coat are North Korea’s finest remote “job applicants.” Spoiler alert: they’re not just bad hires – they’re basically an expansion pack for your company you never wanted, designed to funnel cash straight into Pyongyang’s respawn point.
A Well-Oiled Digital Heist Machine
Here’s the loot box you wish you hadn’t opened: the FBI, DOJ, and pretty much every three-letter acronym you can think of confirm that North Korea has been running a massive infiltration scheme in plain sight. The mask came off thanks to cybersecurity researcher “SttyK,” who stumbled upon a hoard of emails and data big enough to make a hoarder weep – gigabytes upon gigabytes showing a dozen distinct operative groups, each with a dozen members, all under the easy-to-love title of “grand master.” Sounds less like a job network, more like a raid guild run by someone who takes spreadsheets far too seriously.
Tools of the Trade
What’s their weapon loadout? Slack channels. Google accounts. GitHub repos. And spreadsheets – endless spreadsheets – documenting goals, programming requirements, and hiring progress like they’re min-maxing a stat-heavy RPG. Every cell, a grind; every row, a questline leading to… more money for the regime. And before you imagine this as some Ocean’s Eleven-style infiltration, remember: most interviews weren’t even face-to-face. Catfishing for employment – a whole new PvP mode.
Crafting Fake Identities
This isn’t your standard “lying on your resume” nonsense; these folks are transnational cosplayers of the corporate world. One defector admitted to going through a character creation screen of citizenships – starting with a Chinese persona before moving to Hungarian, Turkish, and British skins for better employment buffs. Why grind with a +2 when you can equip a Western +10 charisma modifier?
Quest Targets: High-Value Jobs
- Artificial Intelligence – because nothing screams “innocent” like North Korea wading into AI.
- Blockchain – the dark web’s favourite currency farm.
- Bot Development – for when you want to gank multiple markets at once.
- Web and App Development – all the better to slip in backdoors, my dear.
- CMS Development – perfect for messing with digital infrastructure from the inside.
Loot and Tribute
Our friendly-speaking defector friend Jin-su averaged $5,000 per month – not bad until you realise 85% of that is wired directly to the mothership in Pyongyang. That’s like killing the raid boss and watching your loot get ninja’d by the guild leader. The UN estimates this whole scandal nets North Korea somewhere between €250 million and €600 million annually. And you thought loot boxes were a scam.
Parallel Criminal DLC: Hacking
As if stealing corporate salaries wasn’t enough, their hacker wing is out here pulling off billion-dollar heists. In March 2025 alone, they bagged $1.5 billion – and yes, billion with a “B”. That’s not just beating the final boss, that’s glitching the game economy until everyone quits playing.
Working Conditions: Not Your Silicon Valley Dream
And in case you’re thinking they get to enjoy the freelancer lifestyle – think again. The leaked Slack chats show orders for 14-hour days, easy. That’s basically crunch time forever. Sure, you might work similar hours at a notorious game developer, but at least there’s a coffee machine and occasional pizza. Here, the endgame reward is avoiding starvation and contributing to the regime’s next ballistic missile showpiece.
Final Verdict
This isn’t just a corporate security breach or a quirky international mystery – it’s a hostile takeover of the trust economy in tech. Employers have been openly recruiting rogue-state employees without knowing it, all while Slack channels, Google Sheets, and fake passports got passed around like rare gear in a guild bank. It’s sophisticated, it’s brazen, and it’s a reminder that the tech hiring process isn’t a dungeon crawl – it’s an active war zone, complete with bosses who don’t play fair.
My overall impression? Bad. Dangerously bad. The fact this can run for years without collapsing under its own absurdity says everything you need to know about both corporate due diligence and the resilience of state-backed exploitation schemes. The only upside? If you ever feel your workplace is soul-crushing, spare a thought for the poor guy grinding in Pyongyang’s digital sweatshop. At least you can log off.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.
Article source: Sabíamos que Corea del Norte lleva años infiltrando a trabajadores en empresas de Occidente. Ahora sabemos cómo lo hacen, https://www.xataka.com/empresas-y-economia/sabiamos-que-corea-norte-lleva-anos-infiltrando-a-trabajadores-empresas-occidente-ahora-sabemos-como-hacen
