Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has uncovered a dramatic surge in activity by North Korean operatives infiltrating Western tech companies under false identities. By exploiting remote IT roles, they are channeling income directly into state weapons programs.
Over the past year alone, CrowdStrike recorded more than 320 incidents — a 220% increase compared to the previous year. These state-trained developers disguise themselves as freelancers or even full-time employees, managing to embed themselves in hundreds of organizations, including Fortune 500 companies.
Some leverage so-called “laptop farms” and U.S.-based collaborators to log in from domestic IP addresses, masking their true locations. With the help of generative AI and automation, some operatives can juggle multiple jobs at once, converse fluently in English, and even automate parts of coding tasks.
Despite law enforcement crackdowns, CrowdStrike warns that new technologies allow them to bypass even the most advanced hiring checks. This means that even the most secure tech companies remain vulnerable to insider threats seamlessly blending into global remote teams.
In brief: Tech World Highlights
- Sony announced that U.S. prices for the PlayStation 5 will rise by $50 per unit, largely due to new tariffs on imported electronics.
- Great Western Railway revealed that its battery-powered passenger train traveled 200 miles on a single charge, setting a new world record.
- Scientists created the most detailed genetic map of frailty in older adults, paving the way for anti-aging therapies by pinpointing risk-associated genes.
- Google is expanding access to its AI Mode for conversational search, rolling it out globally alongside new agent features for managing restaurant reservations.
- Cohere released Command A Reasoning, a new enterprise reasoning model that outperforms rivals such as gpt-oss and DeepSeek R1 on agent benchmarks.
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