5 plead guilty to laptop farm and ID theft scheme to land North Koreans US IT jobs

Five men have pleaded guilty to running laptop farms and providing other assistance to North Koreans to obtain remote IT work at US companies in violation of US law, federal prosecutors said.

The pleas come amid a rash of similar schemes orchestrated by hacking and threat groups backed by the North Korean government. The campaigns, which ramped up nearly five years ago, aim to steal millions of dollars in job revenue and cryptocurrencies to fund North Korean weapons programs. Another motive is to seed cyber attacks for espionage. In one such incident, a North Korean man who fraudulently obtained a job at US security company KnowBe4 installed malware immediately upon beginning his employment.

On Friday, the US Justice Department said that five men pleaded guilty to assisting North Koreans in obtaining jobs in a scheme orchestrated by APT38, also tracked under the name Lazarus. APT38 has targeted the US and ...