Two Americans Sentenced for Running North Korean Laptop Farms

Two Americans got 18 months in prison for running "laptop farms" that helped North Korean IT workers fraudulently land remote jobs at nearly 70 US companies. Matthew Knoot in Nashville and Erick Ntekereze Prince in New York are the seventh and eighth US-based facilitators sent to prison this year under the DOJ's DPRK RevGen Domestic Enabler Initiative. The scheme: North Korean IT workers create fake American identities using stolen Social Security numbers and addresses, apply for remote tech jobs on LinkedIn and Upwork, and get hired. The American company ships a laptop to what they think is the new hire's home address. That address is actually a laptop farm. The operator plugs the laptop in, installs remote desktop software, and the actual worker — physically in China or Russia — logs in over the internet. Every keystroke originates from a US IP and a US-shipped device. The salary goes to a US bank account controlled under the stolen identity, and most of it gets routed back to Pyongyang. The DOJ initiative has searched twenty-nine known or suspected laptop farms across sixteen states, seized twenty-nine financial accounts, and taken down twenty-one fraudulent websites used to launder the money. North Korea funds its weapons program partly with stolen wages from US tech jobs — and every fake hire is also a job an American applicant didn't get. Sources: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/americans-sentenced-for-running-laptop-farms-for-north-korea/ https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-us-nationals-sentenced-facilitating-fraudulent-remote-information-technology-worker-0 https://cyberscoop.com/north-korea-it-worker-scheme-laptop-farm-facilitators-sentenced/ https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/dprk-it-workers https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-coordinated-nationwide-actions-combat-north-korean-remote More on cybersecurity, privacy, scams, and homelab on Hake Hardware. New shorts every weekday. #cybersecurity #northkorea #laptopfarms