From the Daily Caller: A tiny lag in keyboard strokes exposed a North Korean operative who infiltrated Amazon’s corporate network through a contractor.
Amazon Chief Security Officer Stephen Schmidt revealed the discovery at a company security event in New York City this week, Bloomberg reported. Keystroke data from the worker’s laptop should have taken tens of milliseconds to reach Seattle headquarters. Instead, the delay exceeded 110 milliseconds.
“If we hadn’t been looking for the DPRK workers, we would not have found them,” Schmidt told Bloomberg.
The imposter was hired by an Amazon contractor and received a company laptop. Amazon security staff detected unusual behavior on the machine and found it was being remotely controlled. They traced the traffic back to China.
The report notes that Amazon has foiled more than 1,800 North Korean hiring attempts since April 2024. The North Korean imposters apply for jobs with American companies by pretending to be remote IT workers, in order to raise money for the regime and its weapons programs.
Schmidt explained that his team first observed the imposter for a time before taking action, since the laptop didn’t have access to “anything interesting.” After reviewing the application and resume submitted to the contractor, he said they realized “This looks like somebody who had used the same playbook as other North Koreans that we’ve seen to get this job.”
An Arizona woman sentenced to prison in July for helping fraudulent IT workers was reportedly the person behind the scheme.
“A North Korean imposter was uncovered, working as a sysadmin at Amazon U.S., after their keystroke input lag raised suspicions with security specialists at the online retail giant. Normally, a U.S.-based remote worker’s computer would send keystroke data within tens of…
— Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) December 19, 2025
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