Elliott Garlock, the recruiter, thought the interview was amazing. In February, as Garlock was vetting applicants for an engineering position at a cryptocurrency company, he came across one who triggered almost every warning signal.
It took some convincing to get the interviewee to switch on his camera when he joined the Zoom call with it off. The background noise made him feel as if he were trapped in a stuffy chamber. He said he was from San Francisco, but when questioned, he could only say he was from the “Bay Area.”
The interview was really off-putting and did not lead to anything useful. The worst part is that it wasn’t the only one. One of Garlock’s first encounters as the creator of Stella Talent Partners was with a candidate who was virtually similar to themselves. And then there was another, and another, and still another.
After a while, Garlock says, “I grew upset since it was a terrible waste of time.” First, I was under the impression that they were located overseas and were taking advantage of the flexibility of remote employment in order to collect a paycheck while doing nothing.
There is a fresh theory that those applying for employment in North Korea were really North Koreans seeking to launder money for their secretive government. That’s in line with what the FBI and Treasury Department have said, whereby they’ve expressed concern about the growing threat posed by North Korea to the bitcoin market.
One disastrous hack in March demonstrated the risk is not hypothetical. Hackers with ties to the North Korean government, known as the Lazarus Group, stole almost $600 million in cryptocurrency from the Axie Infinity network. According to data collected by Chainalysis, North Korean hackers stole $840 million in the first five months of 2022, an increase of over $200 million over the total they took in 2020 and 2021.
Obviously, it has far-reaching implications. Anne Neuberger, a deputy national security advisor in the Biden administration, thinks that around a third of North Korea’s crypto loots goes toward its weapons development, including nuclear weapons. Money from this source is also used for spying inside the nation. This year, it came to light that a North Korean spy had been paying two South Korean citizens with bitcoin to collect military secrets.
According to Nick Carlsen, a former FBI North Korea specialist who now works for crypto security startup TRM Labs, “Crypto is undoubtedly now crucial to North Korea.” They are a crypto powerhouse by any measure.
That is, a crypto superpower that also has nuclear weapons. Some believe that the country’s crypto-savvy is directly supporting the construction of those nukes, and as such, the likelihood of a new nuclear weapons test is rising. In the last week and a half, the rogue country has significantly increased the frequency and intensity of its ballistic missile tests: On Wednesday, North Korea fired a missile over the island of Hokkaido, prompting the Japanese government to issue a mandatory evacuation order for more than 5 million people. This, too, very certainly, was financed in whole or in part with stolen bitcoin.
North Korea, officially called as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, has been more reliant on crypto since the outbreak. Coal, amphetamine, cigarettes, and human labor were previously exported to Southeast Asia, Russia, and mainly China through illegal channels. However, Kim Jong Un’s zero COVID plan has closed borders, reducing the country’s already meager earnings. There were widespread reports of food shortages in 2020, and trade with China, North Korea’s largest economic partner, dropped by 80 percent. Simultaneously, the price of bitcoin has exploded.
Bitcoin’s price is now 250% greater than it was before the crypto crisis. Second-largest cryptocurrency Ether has increased by more than 700%.
Between February and April, Garlock believes he came into contact with a dozen people he now suspects of being North Korean agents. Fortunately, none of them were recommended to any of the businesses he represents. Despite their small size, North Korean hacking groups have shown capable of inflicting massive harm by fooling even a single individual.
