In this interview, Ashlee Vance explains how North Korea has built a covert, globally‑distributed workforce that applies for remote jobs at cryptocurrency firms and other U.S. companies. These “fake workers” use fabricated LinkedIn profiles, AI‑generated facial images, and coordinated interview teams to gain employment. Once inside, they can insert backdoors into code, enabling massive cryptocurrency thefts – including a billion‑dollar heist in January. The operation is hierarchical, with a boss, a cadre of specialists (coding, interview handling, profile maintenance), and recurring “minion” personas such as a character named Kevin who appears in multiple interviews. Teams have been traced moving between locations like Laos and Vladivostok. The campaign has expanded beyond crypto firms to mainstream brands such as Nike, illustrating the breadth of the threat.
Chapters
North Koreans would like get jobs at these crypto companies and they'd start coding away and they'd maybe write a little backdoor into the code and suddenly like $100 million would go missing or more. And they started pulling off these like incredible scams. Even just in January, there was more than a billion-dollar heist that happened, North Koreans related, because they got good at, very good at stealing cryptocurrency. They're physically in North Korea doing this job? The way things are right now, they're all over the world. They're actually these teams of people that are fake workers. Suddenly, I think a light bulb went off and they were like, hey, you know, we have all— we have this sort of army of people out there doing, doing whatever they can to raise money for the, for the great leader. Let's get them some jobs, some remote jobs. Then it started seeping beyond crypto companies. So just like regular companies, like you mentioned Nike. Nike was, was definitely affected by this.
There's just these fake personas that are applying for the job and they just get hired.
Yeah, they do. You think you're dealing with one person. During the onboarding and the interviewing process, but you're probably dealing with like 4 or 5 people. There are these teams of the North Koreans who, some of them whom travel around the world. Like we found some in Laos and then they moved to Vladivostok. So they have a boss and there are a bunch of employees and some of the employees are great at doing the initial letters and maintaining the LinkedIn and doing all this stuff. Some are great at coding. Some are great at interviews. When you go through the process of hiring, like let's call him Kevin, which they do too.
They love Kevin. Kevin's their favorite minion, right?
Yeah, he's a top minion. So when you're hiring Kevin, you set up an interview. Some of the interviews, they're not actual real people they're interviewing. Like a fake face on a real person? It's like AI-generated image of a creature that looks like a human is answering everything. The interviewer will just be like, "This doesn't seem real." You know, you can tell they're getting a weird vibe. And the interviewer will say something like, "Could you just put your hand in front of your face?" The interview will end. Okay.
