The hiring team at Kraken, a U.S.-based crypto exchange, noticed immediately that something was off about “Steven Smith,” a would-be IT worker who applied for a software engineering job in early October. But it wasn’t until they compared Smith’s email to a list of those suspected to be part of a hacker group that their suspicions were confirmed: Smith was a North Korean operative.
Kraken could have just tossed the application. Instead, Kraken’s chief security officer, Nick Percoco, decided to take a closer look at Steven Smith. He saw this as an opportunity to learn more about the infiltration tactics of North Korea, which have robbed billions from crypto companies, and how he could prevent that from happening at Kraken.
