North Korean workers may be inundating U.S. tech companies that may not be aware

North Korean workers infiltrating tech jobs

Evan Axelbank reports.

TAMPA, Fla. - North Korean workers are inundating tech companies in the Tampa Bay area and around the United States.

Last summer, FOX 13 told you about a Clearwater company called, "KnowBe4" that came forward to admit it had accidentally hired a worker who was using their new high-paying job to fund the regime's weapons programs.

But now, experts said the problem has metastasized, with potentially hundreds of U.S. companies unwittingly employing thousands of operatives.

Local perspective:

"About a dozen people at that conference told me they too had done it, but none of them have been public," said Roger Grimes of KnowBe4. "And then I heard from more and more. Now, I've heard from probably over 50 people and companies."

The applicant who told them he was from Atlanta was – in actuality – from Pyongyang, or at least directed from there.

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Dig deeper:

An unclassified U.S. government guidance released in January said, "The DPRK dispatches thousands of highly skilled IT workers around the world to generate revenue that contributes to its weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. These IT workers take advantage of existing demands for specific IT skills, such as software and mobile application development, to obtain freelance employment contracts."

FOX 13's Evan Axelbank: "There's no doubt to you that there are, right now, North Koreans working for American companies that have no idea."

KnowBe4's Roger Grimes: "No doubt, I would say that likely to be hundreds, if not over a thousand."

What's next:

The tech industry is trying to figure out what to do. A panel discussion hosted in late April at the cybersecurity conference, RSAC 2025, focused on the threat faced by North Korean hackers.

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"How do you identify and mitigate and what does the threat actually look like moving forward in the next couple years?" asked Bryan Vorndran, the assistant director of the FBI's cyber division.

The problem is that Pyongyang has figured out how to find middlemen in the United States who are willing to host a laptop farm, so North Korean operatives living in China can appear to be working from the U.S. They can apply for and get jobs that pay well into six figures, using deepfake photos, translation apps and polished American accents.

The other side:

An indictment filed in the Southern District of Florida said the North Korean regime has generated hundreds of millions of dollars from unwitting U.S. employers.

"It starts with maybe one or two laptops," said Lizzie Pelker, an FBI special agent, "and then we'll see upwards of 90 laptops at one person's residence."

The indictment hits two staffing agencies, including one in Florida, that knowingly coordinated with North Koreans for six years to help them get hired by U.S. tech firms. The case is a speck of the opportunity that's out there for a country that was isolated by international sanctions, at least before the internet.

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"It is providing finance, but it is also opening the door for interesting cases of potential future espionage, data collection, and future access control," said Tom Hegel of the internet security company SentinelOne.

Often, if they're even aware of what they've done, the American middlemen are arrested. The North Koreans seldom see a courtroom.

"We still have a ton of North Korean fake employees applying for full-time remote-only positions," said Grimes. "Sometimes, it's up to 80% of the resumes we get for certain positions. I've talked to some employers that told me it's 100% of the resumes they're getting."

Suddenly, Florida is attracting a different kind of tourist.

The Source: The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13's Evan Axelbank.

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