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The post Trezor Says 347,000 Users Received Phishing Emails After Brevo Hack appeared first on SecurityWeek.
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North Koreaโs IT worker scheme funds Russiaโs war effort
The people orchestrating North Koreaโs IT worker scheme are funneling money through a web of front companies and intermediaries, including sanctioned entities, that partly fund Russiaโs war effort against Ukraine, DTEX said in a report Tuesday.
The security firmโs research shows that the scheme is moving beyondย funding the countryโs weapons program and into a bigger pool that supports many of the regimeโs objectives. This includes manufacturing weapons and supplying them to Russiaโs military, according to DTEX.
โWhen we think IT workers, we typically think head down, get your money, support the weapons program,โย Michael Barnhart, nation state investigator at DTEX and lead author of the report, told CyberScoop.
โItโs a broad cover-all statement when we say itโs supplying the weapons program,โ he said. โThatโs the predominant place it goes,โ but many other domestic programs and entities tasked with other projects are taking cuts from that pool of money as well.ย
Barnhart corroborated previously leaked data from an internal North Korean payment server, which included 390 IT worker accounts, chat logs and transaction data.
He mapped the transactions to organizations that received those funds, including multiple sanctioned entities: Sobaeksu, Saenal, and Songkwang.ย
The money trail also showed $1.97 million in payments from North Korean IT workers between December 2025 and February 2026 flowing directly through Korea Ryonbong General Corp, a sanctioned defense entity that procures weapons for the regimeโs military programs.
Western officials previously reported that North Korea provided ammunition and weapons to Russia in 2023, and in the fall of 2024 sent upwards of 15,000 soldiers to fight alongside Russian troops, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
โThis is a consequence that is often overlooked,โ Barnhart wrote in the report. โRevenue from the IT worker stream does not stop at a resume scam or a payroll-abuse story. It can feed a larger DPRK system that supports sanctioned entities, domestic state needs, and a Russia war effort that is actively consuming all facets of North Korean weapons and military support.โย
Data from the internal North Korean payment server, which was first published by ZachXBT in April, is controlled by โPC-1234,โ a single administrator that DTEX has been tracking for a while. The wallet and its cluster of activity remains active, Barnhart said.ย
The three months of previous activity attributed to the wallet amounted to more than $2.84 million, which then flowed upward into dozens of organizations.ย
โItโs not a top-down funded regime. Itโs a bottom-up,โ Barnhart said. โEveryone makes money at the bottom and then they take a tiny cut, and then the money goes upwards to what we just blanketly say is the weapons program. But really, it can go a lot more places.โ
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