Are you a freelancer? North Korean spies may be using you

North Korea is recruiting freelancers as identity proxies to score remote contracts and bank accounts, according to new cyber intelligence research.

North Korea’s IT operatives are shifting strategies and recruiting freelancers to provide proxy identities for remote jobs.

Operatives are contacting job seekers on Upwork, Freelancer and GitHub before moving conversations to Telegram or Discord, where they coach them through setting up remote access software and passing identity verifications.

In earlier cases, North Korean workers scored remote gigs using fabricated IDs. According to Heiner García, a cyber threat intelligence expert at Telefónica and a blockchain security researcher, operatives are now avoiding those barriers by working through verified users who hand over remote access to their computers.

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