North Korean fraudsters stealing billions of dollars in cryptocurrency have sparked Australia into a joint anti-scam effort with the US and Canada.
North Korean IT workers posing as legit white-collar workers have stolen an estimated $US2.8bn ($A4.04bn) in crypto since January 2024 and raked in revenues anywhere from $US500m ($A722m) to $US1.2bn ($A1.79bn) for the regime.
The threat prompted a US Department of State, and Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade conference in Sydney on Monday.
As well as the Australian and US foreign agencies, government agency Global Affairs Canada, private firm DTEX and Google subsidiary Mandiant hosted 80 Australian tech, recruiting and financial workers at the conference.
A US Department of State statement on the conference says the threat posed by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea information technology workers has “grown significantly in scale and sophistication in recent years”.
“DPRK IT workers pose as legitimate remote professionals to infiltrate private sector organisations, generating revenue for the DPRK government and, in some cases, conducting malicious cyber activity,” it said.
A UN sanctions monitoring group estimates North Korean cyber actors and IT workers have stolen more than $4.04bn of cryptocurrency from January 2024 to October 2025.
It says this earnt an estimated $US350-800m in revenue in 2024, “enabling the financing of the DPRK’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs in violation of UN Security Council sanctions”.
“In response to these threats, the United States and Australia with support from Canada convened government officials together with industry leaders in the fight against these threats, including DTEX and Mandiant,” the US statement reads.
“Over 80 professionals from Australia’s technology sector, recruiting and staffing companies, and financial services examined DPRK IT worker tactics, shared best practices, and discussed public-private sector collaboration strategies to detect and mitigate these threats.”
