Crypto Exchange Kraken Uncovers North Korean Espionage Plot
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Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure Crypto exchange Kraken’s latest security disclosure reads less like a corporate blog post than a field report from the front lines of modern cyber-warfare. Published on 1 May 2025 under the blunt title “How we identified a North Korean hacker who tried to get a job at Kraken,” the account describes in granular detail how a seemingly routine hiring process morphed into what the exchange openly calls “an intelligence gathering operation.” From the first contact, something felt wrong. Recruiters noticed that the applicant “joined under a different name from the one on their resume, and quickly changed it,” a detail the security team later described as the opening note in a symphony of red flags. Moments later, the interview took on an uncanny timbre: “the candidate occasionally switched between voices, indicating that they were being coached through the interview in real time.” Kraken Tricks North Korean Crypto Hacker Kraken’s staff did not rely on intuition alone. The post explains that industry partners had already circulated “a list of email addresses linked to the hacker group,” and one of those addresses matched the résumé in question. Armed with that match, Kraken’s Red Team launched an OSINT dive that exposed what it calls “a larger network of fake identities and aliases” spreading across the crypto employment market. According to the blog, multiple companies had unwittingly hired personas from the same lattice of fabricated résumés, and “one identity in this network was also a known foreign agent on the sanctions list.” Technical inconsistencies began piling up. The exchange recounts how the applicant relied on “remote colocated Mac desktops but interacted with other components through a VPN,” a configuration favoured by operators who need to launder location data. Investigators tied the…
Filed under: News - @ May 3, 2025 4:28 am