Update 12/21/25 6:20am PT: In a statement of clarification to Tom's Hardware, an Amazon representative clarified, "The DPRK actor was hired as a contract system developer," and not as a sysadmin, as previously thought.
Original story follows.
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You have to look for them to find them
Amazon’s success can be almost entirely credited to the fact that it is actively looking for DPRK impostors, warns its Chief Security Officer. “If we hadn’t been looking for the DPRK workers,” Schmidt said, “we would not have found them.”
With this company policy explained, a blip on the Amazon security radar was caused earlier this year when a new sysadmin’s Amazon laptop monitor alerted security personnel about unusual behavior.
If we hadn’t been looking for the DPRK workers, we wouldn't have found them.
Amazon Chief Security Officer Stephen Schmidt
Amazon security experts took a closer look at the flagged ‘U.S. remote worker’ and determined that their remote laptop was being remotely controlled – causing the extra keystroke input lag. Schmidt emphasizes that good-quality security software was key to this investigation.
It turns out that the DPRK had access to this Amazon laptop located in Arizona. A woman found to be facilitating this fraud on behalf of North Korean imposter workers was sentenced to several years in prison earlier this year.
As well as red flag computer network symptoms, the fumbling use of American idioms and English-language articles continues to be a giveaway when conversing with such impostors.
Tip of the iceberg
The problem of North Koreans infiltrating U.S. corporations for profit, mischief, and more is undoubtedly a serious one. We’ve covered sizable FBI seizures of equipment recently, perhaps showing just the tip of the iceberg. More successful infiltrations by the DPRK, as well as hostile nations like Iran, Russia, and China, are likely to be ongoing.
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