May 7, 2018
Andrea Berger, Cameron Trainer, Shea Cotton, and Catherine Dill
Occasional Paper #36
Read the full Occasional Paper #36:
The Shadow Sector: North Korea’s Information Technology Networks
North Korea’s commercial information technology (IT) industry has operated overseas, largely unnoticed, for decades. It sells a range of products and services including website and app development, administrative and business management software, IT security software, and biometric identification software for law enforcement applications. Its global network includes a myriad of front companies, intermediaries, and foreign partnerships.
Yet despite the attention currently paid to North Korea’s overseas revenue streams and its offensive activities in cyberspace, the spotlight has yet to illuminate the money-spinning North Korean IT firms whose offerings seem to have found their way into corporate supply chains and potentially even Western-allied law enforcement agencies.
Drawing upon extensive open-source investigations by the authors, this paper examines several nodes in North Korea-linked IT networks and considers the implications for current and future policy efforts to stem North Korean revenue and mitigate the cyber-security threats the country poses.
