North Korea relies upon a network of skilled Information Technology (IT) workers, deployed within and outside of North Korea, to obtain false identities and remotely earn income to fund North Korea’s unlawful nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs.
North Korean IT workers impersonate nationals of other countries to obtain work and income through online platforms operated by private companies for employment, procurement, and contracting of services. These workers seek out contracts with the intent of remitting their salaries to their parent North Korean agencies. They also pose an insider threat to companies and are involved in data exfiltration, cryptocurrency theft, and theft of sensitive information. North Korean IT workers employ increasingly sophisticated methods, including the integration of AI, to obfuscate their identities and expand their activities globally.
Read more…
Source: U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Cyber Division
Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox
Related:
- New Reductor Malware Hijacks HTTPS Traffic
October 3, 2019
Researchers have discovered a new malware strain, dubbed Reductor, that allows hackers to manipulate Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) traffic by tweaking a browser’s random numbers generator, used to ensure a private connection between the client and server. Once infected, Reductor is used to spy on a victim’s browser activity, said the Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT) ...
- PKPLUG: Chinese Cyber Espionage Group Attacking Asia
October 3, 2019
For three years, Unit 42 has tracked a set of cyber espionage attack campaigns across Asia, which used a mix of publicly available and custom malware. Unit 42 created the moniker “PKPLUG” for the threat actor group, or groups, behind these and other documented attacks referenced later in this report. We say group or groups ...
- The Eye on the Nile
October 3, 2019
Back in March 2019, Amnesty International published a report that uncovered a targeted attack against journalists and human rights activists in Egypt. The victims even received an e-mail from Google warning them that government-backed attackers attempted to steal their passwords. According to the report, the attackers did not rely on traditional phishing methods or credential-stealing payloads, but rather ...
- Hack Breaks PDF Encryption, Opens Content to Attackers
October 2, 2019
Researchers in Germany have invented a new hack that can allow someone to break the encryption of PDF files and access their content — or even forge signed PDF files under certain circumstances. A team from Ruhr University Bochum, FH Münster University of Applied Sciences and Hackmanit GmbH developed the attack, called PDFex, that can allow an attacker to view the ...
- HQWar: the higher it flies, the harder it drops
October 2, 2019
Mobile dropper Trojans are one of today’s most rapidly growing classes of malware. In Q1 2019, droppers are in the 2nd or 3rd position in terms of share of total detected threats, while holding nearly half of all Top 20 places in 2018. Since the droppers’ main task is to deliver payload while sidestepping the ...
- Securing the Industrial Internet of Things: Addressing IIoT Risks in Healthcare
October 2, 2019
The constant quest for prolonging and preserving human life has continually driven technologies to develop groundbreaking innovations in the delivery of healthcare services and state-of-the-art treatments. Like in many other enterprises, the industrial internet of things (IIoT) has rapidly transformed the network and data infrastructure in health and medicine. With the IIoT, medical data and information have ...