Amazon Blocks Over 1,800 North Koreans From Remote IT Jobs Amid Cybersecurity Concerns

US tech giant Amazon has stopped more than 1,800 individuals linked to North Korea from joining the company after detecting attempts to secure remote IT roles, citing a sharp rise in suspicious job applications. Amazon’s Chief Security Officer Stephen Schmidt said the company has seen nearly a one-third increase in such applications over the past year, warning that the issue is widespread across the global tech industry and not limited to one firm.

According to Schmidt, many of these workers use so-called “laptop farms” — computers physically located in the United States but operated remotely from overseas — to bypass security checks. Common red flags identified by Amazon include wrongly formatted phone numbers, questionable academic credentials, and inconsistent personal details. The company said North Korea is known to deploy IT workers abroad to earn revenue, which is then secretly routed back to the country.

The concern follows a recent US case in which a woman in Arizona was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for running a laptop farm that helped North Korean IT workers obtain remote jobs at over 300 US companies, generating more than $17 million. US officials say such cyber-enabled operations are part of North Korea’s long-running cyber warfare strategy, aimed at stealing funds — often through cryptocurrency crimes — to finance its nuclear weapons programme.

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