The US tech giant has blocked more than 1,800 job applications from suspected North Korean agents, a senior Amazon executive said.
North Koreans have tried to apply for remote IT jobs using stolen or fake identities, Amazon security director Stephen Schmidt said in a LinkedIn post.
“Their goal is typically simple: hire, get paid, and put the wages back into funding the regime's weapons programs,” he said, adding that the trend is likely to happen industry-wide, especially in the United States.
US and South Korean authorities have warned that Pyongyang's agents are engaging in online fraud.
Last year, Amazon saw a nearly one-third increase in job applications from North Koreans. Mr. Schmidt said in his post.
He said operatives typically work with people running “laptop farms,” meaning U.S.-based computers that are operated remotely from outside the country.
The firm used a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and employee screening to screen job applications, he said.
The strategies used by such scammers have become more sophisticated, Mr. Schmidt said.
Attackers are hacking inactive LinkedIn accounts using leaked verification credentials. They target real software engineers to make them appear trustworthy, he said, urging firms to report suspicious job applications to authorities.
Mr. Schmidt warned employers to watch out for signs of fraudulent North Korean job applications, including improperly formatted phone numbers and mismatched educational histories.
In June, the US government said it had identified 29 “laptop farms”. which were illegally exploited throughout the country North Korean IT specialists.
They used stolen or falsified Americans' identities to help North Korean citizens get jobs in the United States, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said.
He also indicted American brokers who helped provide jobs to North Korean militants.
In July, a woman from Arizona was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for managing a laptop farm to help North Korean IT workers enable remote work for more than 300 US companies.
The Ministry of Justice said the scheme netted it and Pyongyang more than $17 million (£12.6 million) in illicit profits.
