North Korea’s commercial information technology (IT) industry has operated overseas, largely unnoticed, for decades. It sells a range of products and services including website and app development, administrative and business management software, IT security software, and biometric identification software for law enforcement applications. Its global network includes a myriad of front companies, intermediaries, and foreign partnerships. Yet despite the attention currently paid to North Korea’s overseas revenue streams and its offensive activities in cyberspace, the spotlight has yet to illuminate the money-spinning North Korean IT firms whose offerings seem to have found their way into corporate supply chains and potentially even Western-allied law enforcement agencies. Drawing upon extensive open-source investigations by the authors, this paper examines several nodes in North Korea-linked IT networks and considers the implications for current and future policy efforts to stem North Korean revenue and mitigate the cyber-security threats the country poses.
North Korea’s activity in the IT sector is likely to continue to pose an underappreciated cybersecurity threat. At present, it seems that many affected clients have unwittingly engaged North Koreans. While the level of access Pyongyang may have into their customers’ systems and data depends upon the services rendered, there is demonstrated potential for North Korea to exploit these relationships for its cyber activities. As long as North Korea’s IT sector remains in the shadows, Pyongyang’s concerning sale of such goods and services will likely continue unabated. https://www.nonproliferation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/op36-the-shadow-sector.pdf
There is rumor going around in S. Korea. It says that IT project from a big corporation is subcontracted to a software firm, which subcontracts it to another one. This chain continues. Eventually, the chain extends to a Chinese subcontractor, who finally subcontracts it to “N. Koreans.” So it could be N. Korean coders who make at least part of software for a big S. Korean corporation. While the veracity of this rumor can’t be confirmed, it is entirely feasible. It is also said that this is how N. Korean farm and fish product make their way to S. Korea. They could pass through Chinese intermediaries to the hands of S. Korean buyers.