North Korean hackers are infiltrating tens of thousands of job seekers’ computer networks by posing as prospective employers, such as artificial intelligence firms, to steal sensitive information and millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency, U.S. and allied governments warned Friday.

The security agencies behind the alert, attributed the group, known as WaterPlum or Contagious Interview, as operating under the 313 General Bureau of the Munitions Industry Department subordinate to the Central Committee of the Workers Party of Korea. The efforts dovetail with those of North Korean IT workers.

“WaterPlum actors pose as prospective employers to target software developers and IT professionals worldwide under the pretext of attractive job opportunities,” the agencies wrote. “They often impersonate legitimate Artificial Intelligence (AI), cryptocurrency, or Non-Fungible Token (NFT) companies and have also used recruiting services.”

Additionally, “Some WaterPlum actors also operate as North Korean IT workers performing web system design and development tasks on corporate web systems for clients,” read the alert from agencies in Japan, Australia and Germany, alongside the FBI and the Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Center.

They’ve used the stolen information to fuel other operations, and the overlap between WaterPlum and North Korean IT workers is substantial, the agencies said.

“WaterPlum actors and North Korean IT Workers used the same IP addresses when accessing laptop farms, using cloud-sourcing services, and applying for positions at the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange,” they wrote.

Collectively, WaterPlum has infected more than 30,000 devices in more than 100 countries, targeting IT professionals in Japan, the United States, Europe and other nations. Its operations have transferred the equivalent of nearly $11 million of cryptocurrency from over 7,000 crypto wallets to North Korea, according to the alert.

The law enforcement agencies said they have had some success tackling the group, but are seeking further cooperation and released details in the alert about WaterPlum’s tactics, techniques and procedures.

“For the first time in Japan, authorities successfully identified, investigated, and dismantled a ‘laptop farm’ operated by an enabler in Japan,” the alert reads. “Japanese authorities obtained evidence this cyber actor group transferred several hundred million Japanese yen in cryptocurrency to foreign locations outside of Japan. The FBI continues to identify and prosecute US-based actors providing illicit facilitation services to North Korean IT workers.”

The warning comes as the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, an international panel overseeing UN sanctions against North Korea, released a report exposing thousands of North Korean nationals employed in industries around the world.

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Two men from Western Australia were arrested and charged Wednesday for their alleged roles in TeamPCP, a notorious cybercrime group responsible for inserting malicious code into widely used open-source software in a campaign that compromised more than 1,000 organizations worldwide.

Australian authorities did not formally name the men, but Australian media identified them as Ruben Ian Thomson, 21, and Louis Michael Gaebler, 23. Police arrested both after searching properties, seizing electronic devices for forensic testing in the process. 

Thomson faces eight charges, including four counts of unauthorized data modification, dealing in criminal proceeds worth $100,000 or more, and refusal to comply with an order to hand over device passwords. Gaebler faces six related counts. 

The Australian Federal Police, which worked with the Western Australia Police Force (WAPF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, allege both men were part of a syndicate engaged in “data intrusion, identity crime and cryptocurrency-based money laundering.” Investigators said further arrests have not been ruled out.

“These men are allegedly members of the cybercriminal group TeamPCP, whose malicious code potentially compromised more than a thousand organizations worldwide,” said Brett Leatherman, assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Division. “We are proud to work with the Australian Federal Police and the Western Australia Police Force to impose cost on criminal actors and combat the growing threat of software supply-chain attacks.”

Months of havoc

TeamPCP has been one of the most active cybercriminal groups in 2026. In late February, TeamPCP exploited a misconfigured workflow in Trivy, Aqua Security’s widely used vulnerability scanner, and stole a service-account token. Aqua replaced its credentials but missed some.

On March 19, the group pushed a malicious Trivy release through every distribution channel at once, placing malware inside thousands of automated build pipelines. Downstream victims included the European Commission and GitHub.

Investigators estimate the campaign exposed more than 500,000 credentials, removed at least 300 gigabytes of data and produced global cleanup costs in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

In May, a piece of self-replicating malware known as “mini Shai-Hulud” targeted prominent software libraries, including TanStack, UiPath, and MistralAI, embedding credential-stealing code into development tools downloaded millions of times a week.

Earlier this month, Oligo Security shared exclusive research with CyberScoop that dated the group’s attacks as far back as 2020. 

Cat photos and GitHub accounts

Alongside the arrests, researchers at the Canadian threat intelligence firm Flare published research that traced Ruben Thomson’s online presence. 

Working from a GitHub alias, DeadCatx3, the researchers found a bug-bounty account under the name Ruben Thomson and a profile listing masscan[.]cloud, a domain that served as command server for mini Shai-Hulud. From there, a password tied to a school email address led researchers to databases of stolen credentials and a trove of accounts: a personal Google account, a TikTok profile under Thomson’s name, and a Steam gaming page showing a cat seated before several monitors. The cat image appeared on a TeamPCP Telegram identity. Flare assessed with high confidence that Thomson ran the group and said it confirmed the findings with law enforcement.

Charlie Eriksen, lead malware researcher at Aikido Security, called the arrests a “relief,” but warned that the actions won’t mean the threat toward open-source software suddenly vanishes.

“The conditions that produced them haven’t gone away, so there will be another TeamPCP,” he told CyberScoop in an email. “We just don’t know their name yet.”

The two men will appear in Australian court Thursday. 

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A Russian state-sponsored threat group has been stealing sensitive data from governments and commercial organizations since July 2025 via a novel exploit in popular Linux-based enterprise software, U.S. authorities and cyber officials from more than a dozen other countries warned in a joint cybersecurity advisory Thursday.

Laundry Bear’s most recent espionage campaign involves the exploitation of a zero-day vulnerability in Zimbra Collaboration Suite that wasn’t patched until November 2025, five months after attacks were well underway, officials said. 

The exploit just requires a view — no clicks — and allows attackers to steal the previous 90 days’ worth of email, the account’s password, search history, the victim organization’s email directory, two-factor authentication tokens and other newly created passwords.

“The covert and persistent nature of this activity, along with the absence of any known financial extortion, almost certainly indicates this group’s involvement in espionage activities with Russian government backing,” officials wrote in the advisory. 

“Additionally, extensive Ukrainian targeting, prior to use against U.S. and other NATO allies, outlines an increasing trend within Russian cyber threat groups to target Ukrainian users first—both as a priority target and as a testbench for malicious cyber techniques before broader global deployment.”

The state-sponsored espionage group, also known as Void Blizzard, has compromised governments and organizations in the defense, education, energy, law enforcement, media, finance, transportation and technology sectors. 

Laundry Bear’s year-long campaign involving the exploitation of CVE-2025-66376 showcases more technical capabilities, including a custom JavaScript payload it delivers to targeted victims via phishing emails. The threat group could also likely adapt the novel data exfiltration and aggregation capability, dubbed “beehive,” to exploit other vulnerabilities, officials warned.

The defect’s medium-severity rating of 6.1 underscores the challenge defenders regularly confront in prioritizing patching schedules based on measure of severity alone.

The Russian state-supported group, which has been active since at least 2024, is still actively exploiting Zimbra Collaboration Suite instances that remain unpatched, officials said.

Authorities shared Thursday indicators of compromise, mitigation steps and urged organizations to update their vulnerable software.

“This campaign’s targeted victimology and limited exploitation capabilities likely indicate this group manually identifies and targets the victim organizations” by identifying organizations with public-facing infrastructure, officials wrote in the advisory.

Once a target is identified, Laundry Bear also likely compiles email addresses for users to target with the exploit via phishing emails. Officials did not identify specific victims or describe the volume of organizations already compromised.

The joint cybersecurity advisory was issued by the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Moldova, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden.

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Russian state-sponsored hackers are breaking into critical infrastructure around the world by exploiting poorly configured and vulnerable networking devices, authorities from the United States and 12 additional countries said in a joint cybersecurity advisory Monday.

Officials once again urged defenders to take more preventative measures to thwart attacks from the Russian Federal Security Service Center 16, which has been actively targeting critical infrastructure for more than a decade. The hackers are also tracked as Berserk Bear, Energetic Bear, Crouching Yeti, Dragonfly, Ghost Blizzard and Static Tundra.

“This is an ongoing issue that has impacted various U.S. and foreign networks across multiple sectors, including the defense industrial base, communications, energy, financial services, government facilities and health care sectors,” the National Security Agency said in a statement.

The state-sponsored attackers scan the internet for vulnerable routers using default or weak passwords, and have also exploited vulnerabilities in Cisco devices, Cisco’s Smart Install feature and web portals to take over network devices. 

Two of the Cisco vulnerabilities exploited by the Russian FSB Center 16 hackers are quite old, including CVE-2008-4128 and CVE-2018-0171. 

Officials shared technical details of the threat group’s activities and advised network defenders to disable Cisco Smart Install on all devices, use stronger modes of authentication and passwords, monitor for unusual credentials and logins using local accounts. 

The joint advisory comes nearly a year after the FBI issued a similar alert about the same group targeting end-of-life networking devices running Cisco Smart Install. 

On Monday, the European Union blamed Russia’s FSB Center 16 for a December 2025 attack on Poland’s energy grid. The United Kingdom, also on Monday, sanctioned 24 individuals and entities allegedly involved in various attacks attributed to Russian intelligence services.

“From directing criminals to targeting businesses, and striking Poland’s energy grid in the depths of winter, the Russian state is sinking to new lows in its attempts to undermine European security,” Yvette Cooper, foreign security of the United Kingdom, said in a statement. 

Other countries behind the joint cybersecurity advisory include: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Poland and Sweden.

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