HERMIT EMPIRE: North Korea's IT Workers Are Everywhere in Crypto

An investigation published Wednesday by CoinDesk's Sam Kessler reveals just how aggressively and frequently North Korean job applicants have targeted crypto companies

North Korean IT workers have targeted crypto companies in particular, successfully navigating interviews, passing reference checks, even presenting impressive histories of code contributions on the open-source software repository GitHub. CoinDesk's Sam Kessler spoke to more than a dozen crypto companies that said they inadvertently hired IT workers from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), as the nation is officially called. These interviews with founders, blockchain researchers and industry experts reveal that North Korean IT workers are far more prevalent in the crypto industry than previously thought. Virtually every hiring manager approached by CoinDesk for this story acknowledged that they had interviewed suspected North Korean developers, hired them unwittingly, or knew someone who had. "The percentage of your incoming resumes, or people asking for jobs, or wanting to contribute – any of that stuff – that are probably from North Korea is greater than 50% across the entire crypto industry," said Zaki Manian, a prominent blockchain developer who says he inadvertently hired two DPRK IT workers to help develop the Cosmos Hub blockchain in 2021. "Everyone is struggling to filter out these people." Among the unwitting DPRK employers identified by CoinDesk were several well-established blockchain projects, such as Cosmos Hub, Injective, ZeroLend, Fantom, Sushi and Yearn Finance. “This has all been happening behind the scenes,” said Manian. This investigation marks the first time any of these companies have publicly acknowledged that they inadvertently hired DPRK IT workers.