Eurasia Group founder and president Ian Bremmer reacts to the meeting between President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast.”
A digital security company got the shock of a lifetime when it emerged that one of its remote workers was actually a North Korean hacker after infecting the company’s new laptop with malware.
“Once it was received, the malware immediately began loading,” security firm KnowBe4 said. I wrote a blog post The company emphasized that “there was no unauthorized access to KnowBe4’s systems, and no data was lost, leaked or disclosed.”
“KnowBe4 needed a software engineer for its in-house IT AI team,” the company explained. “We posted a job ad, received resumes, conducted interviews, ran background checks, performed reference checks, and hired the person. We sent them a Mac workstation, and it started loading with malware the moment we received it.”
KnowBe4 noticed a “series of suspicious activity” after hiring an unnamed employee to send a Mac laptop to an employee for work purposes on July 15. The company reached out to the user, but the employee responded that they were troubleshooting “speed issues” that “may have caused a security breach.”
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The photo illustration shows an Android mobile device displaying the North Korean flag with a hacker in the background. (Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Attempts to contact employees were made but were ignored as they appeared to be unable to answer the phone and there was no response.
The company claimed that the hackers were operating as part of a “large, well-funded, well-organized, state-sponsored criminal organization,” likely a reference to Andariel, a group of interest to the U.S. government for its ties to the military intelligence services of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
“This case highlights the critical need for greater vetting, along with more rigorous security screening and oversight,” the company said.
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A computer lab at the People’s Learning Center in Pyongan Province, Pyongyang, North Korea, May 22, 2009. (Eric Lafforgue/Art in All of Us/Corbis via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The incident comes as the US State Department unsealed an indictment against a North Korean national for allegedly hacking into a US hospital. The State Department said Lim Jeong-hyok was part of a cyber group called Andariel, which is controlled by North Korea’s military intelligence agency.
Lim and others “conspired US hospital computer system hacked “This incident involved cybercriminals or other healthcare providers installing Maui Ransomware and extorting ransom payments,” according to a State Department statement about the incident.
“In one computer intrusion operation beginning in November 2022, malicious cyber actors hacked into a U.S.-based defense contractor and extracted more than 30 gigabytes of data, much of it dating back to before 2010, including unclassified technical information on materials used in military aircraft and satellites,” the Defense Ministry said.
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US State Department sign in Washington, DC (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images/Getty Images)
The FBI was able to seize online accounts used by the hacking group as well as more than $600,000 in proceeds from the ransomware attacks, which have been or will be returned to victims, a senior FBI official told reporters.
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The Justice Department has filed several criminal cases related to North Korean hacking in recent years, many of which it alleges are commercial operations distinct from those of Russian and Chinese hackers.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
