- FBI’s message follows three earlier in as many years
- Declaration is aimed at educating businesses and warding off domestic partners
- Suggested solutions include the use of endpoint protection on computer systems and control of applications for “typos and unusual nomenclature”
The FBI has claimed that North Korean IT workers are blackmastering US companies that have hired them by utilizing their access to steal source code.
In a statement, the Agency warned of domestic and international companies’ employees who became threat actors, “facilitating cyber criminal activities and performing revenue -generating activities” by using stolen data “on behalf of the regime.”
The recommended end point protection and monitoring of network logs to identify where data has been compromised across “easily accessible funds” that shared internal drives and cloud storage drives.
FBI guidance on remote employment processes
The FBI also recommended a number of actions that all correspond to making sure you know who you are hiring, which sounds like good practice, even if you are not particularly concerned about inadvertently hiring a threat actor.
It recommended stringent identity verification processes throughout the recruitment process and cross-check applicants’ information in relation to others in the pile and across different HR systems.
It also claimed that these applicants use AI tools to blur their identities, but, if it is true, they offered only a few advice to address them in addition to performing recruitment processes personally; Which is not always possible.
The agency also suggested recruiters to ask applicants “soft questions” about their whereabouts and identity, but we would suggest that this is also good practice all around.
North Korean IT employees have been a measure of the FBI for some time, after publishing separate guidelines in 2022, 2023 and 2024. In the latter, the concern expressed that US-based persons, consciously or unconsciously, helped facilitate state-sponsored threat players by establishing US-based infrastructure such as front addresses and businesses.
