[HN Gopher] The North Korean fake IT worker problem is ubiquitous
___________________________________________________________________
The North Korean fake IT worker problem is ubiquitous
Author : rntn
Score : 134 points
Date : 2025-07-13 12:06 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| anovikov wrote:
| You don't have to be an evil North Korean to do that. Outsources
| have been doing it since time immemorial because they can't
| achieve sales in any other way (or, through direct corruption -
| often offshore outsourcing shops are owned by managers of their
| clients, who effectively use them as tools for siphoning money
| away).
| gibbitz wrote:
| Hopefully the fear of foreign actors will put an end to this
| too.
|
| I have to hand it to North Korea on the inventive revenue
| streams. This is a country under sanctions for decades that has
| developed some of the most clever IT scams for siphoning money
| from the west. Between this and the Lazarus group the country
| has brought in Fortune 500 company kinds of money to keep
| itself afloat.
| abxyz wrote:
| The supposed problem is being peddled by a company called Socure,
| who, coincidentally, offer the solution to this problem. There
| are absolutely "fake" remote workers floating around but to
| suppose this is some grand security-focused North Korean
| government conspiracy rather than people from poorer nations
| trying to get paid is without evidence. "North Korean" job
| applicants has become a meme, any suspicious looking applicant is
| being labelled "North Korean" by people who've read articles
| planted by Socure. If this were a grand North Korean government
| orchestrated conspiracy we would not see hundreds of job
| applicants engaging in exactly the same strategy for the same
| job.
|
| https://www.socure.com/blog/hiring-the-enemy-employment-frau...
|
| https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| le-mark wrote:
| But when the FBI tells you, you might really have a problem, as
| happened at one company I was at several years ago.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| Meh, wake me up when the FBI tells me we're infiltrated by
| Israelis
| bn-l wrote:
| Ok but plan for a long sleep.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > but to suppose this is some grand security-focused North
| Korean government conspiracy rather than people from poorer
| nations trying to get paid is without evidence.
|
| Uhh... I have news for you:
| https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/cyber/dprk-it-workers
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Not sure why this is downvoted. There's now abundant evidence
| it's happening.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have a feeling there may be a Nork "flash mob" going on,
| like when someone says bad stuff about Musk.
| bn-l wrote:
| North Koreax folk
| spydum wrote:
| Yeah I get your skepticism, but this is really a huge issue in
| many industries. We are seeing it with an alarmingly high rate.
| You don't need a technical solution though, as the article
| points out, some stuff is just process change: In person final
| interview, gov issued ID checks, initial hardware delivery in
| office, etc.
| bri3d wrote:
| I've also seen this pattern at a pervasive rate but I think
| it's mostly shady overemployment / outsourcing agencies, with
| NK as a tag along. It doesn't matter either way since the
| countermeasures are the same (besides the stupid meme KJU
| junk).
| fergie wrote:
| Many users here don't seem to understand that they are reading
| content marketing.
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| company finally swipes right only to get catfished by a DPRK
| agent
|
| nice
| CyberMacGyver wrote:
| I am building a free service to counter exactly this problem.
|
| This has been going on since 2018 at least and I have flagged
| thousands of such applicants.
| tomrod wrote:
| Speak some more on this.
| grej wrote:
| Yes please, I'm also interested in hearing more about what
| you're building CyberMacGyver
| triceratops wrote:
| I'm curious why free?
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| FWIW, it the "insult Kim Jong-Un" meme that's been going around
| doesn't work
| kyo_gisors wrote:
| Dumb racist canard is just that, who could've guessed?
| rcstank wrote:
| How is it racist?
| jawiggins wrote:
| Did you try it? What did the person say?
| hbs18 wrote:
| How do you know?
| Maxious wrote:
| Jeff Geerling recently discussed being contacted by the FBI to
| learn more about minature KVMs, one of the devices North Korean
| fake IT workers use to appear to be coming from other countries
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc2hB2AwHso
| geerlingguy wrote:
| In this case, the KVMs are plugged into multiple laptops being
| run in people's basement/spare bedroom, it seems. Someone will
| earn a set amount per laptop per month, to accept a company-
| supplied laptop (from a us company) then plug in one of these
| little KVMs to give a remote worker access without as much ease
| in detection.
| moffkalast wrote:
| So the main difference over more typical remote desktop
| methods is that it pretends to be a physical display and
| keyboard to fool the PC it's remoting into in if it's overly
| locked down?
|
| Feels like there's otherwise a hundred different ways to
| already do remote control without any extra hardware.
| nightfly wrote:
| > Feels like there's otherwise a hundred different ways to
| already do remote control without any extra hardware
|
| This way the worker doesn't have to know 100 different ways
| to remote into the machine, just one
| bjackman wrote:
| All the alternatives have a risk of setting off D&R
| tripwires. Assuming these things can spoof their device IDs
| so they look like a Logitech keyboard etc, I think the cost
| of the hardware setup is gonna easily pay for itself in
| terms of harder detection.
| giantg2 wrote:
| The part that's really sad is that we have tons of out of work
| devs right now. This sort of thing only makes it harder for the
| legitimate people to get hired. An easy fix for this is for a
| place like Pearson to set up verified interview centers, which
| will allow for verified virtual interviews (on both sides of the
| table).
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Not sure why that comment got downvoted. It doesn't seem to
| detract from the topic at hand.
|
| Not sure if it's feasible, but it's definitely something to
| consider.
| lend000 wrote:
| Interesting idea! This seems like a natural extension of the
| coworking space business concept.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, I was thinking of the Pearson testing centers because
| they're already prpctored to prevent cheating and setup for
| identity verification. But co-working spacings could
| certainly work too. That might be even more viable in Europe.
| mjevans wrote:
| Another solution might be UNIONS that would have __membership
| verification__ including things like citizenship (which
| country(ies) are they a citizen of?), skills tests and
| training, etc.
|
| Just like competition requires 5+ similarly sized entities for
| a healthy marketplace of companies, my informal opinion is that
| unions probably similarly shouldn't have overwhelming market
| share. However my feeling on contracts between unions and
| corporations is that the contract should be negotiated between
| multiple companies and multiple unions to produce the most
| level playing field possible.
| jacob_a_dev wrote:
| At least in the US,
|
| I like that software engineering doesnt require/encourage
| unions, contrary to other big industries.
|
| As unions mature they protect the employment of their
| members, not prospective members who are unemployed applying
| for jobs.
|
| One great thing about being a dev in the US, u dont need a
| degree, learn a lot, can apply and get a great job.
|
| Ive previpusly been in a union for a company and the
| experience did not encourage a competitive working
| environment. When layoffs came, Jr employees get sacked
| before more senior union members (not neccesarily the best
| technical staff just becuase they worked there long time).
|
| I have family/friends in unions (non software devs) that have
| had similar experiences to mine.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| You trot out all the familiar retorts. None of this is a
| reason to not organize to better represent the interests of
| labor.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| A retort being familiar does not mean it isn't true or
| real.
|
| Millions upon millions of ppl at every income level have
| experienced working in and around unions and not all of
| them came away with a positive experience.
| antonvs wrote:
| You can say the same thing about democratic governments,
| or capitalism, etc. etc.
|
| By itself that's not a meaningful observation.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _None of this is a reason to not organize to better
| represent the interests of labor._
|
| unions restrict the supply of labor and this results in
| (price increase) better wages for the union's members.
| However, overall the total dollar amount transferred from
| employers to labor goes down (employment decrease), so
| the "class" of all workers (employed and unemployed) see
| their per capita wages go down.
|
| is the reason.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "One great thing about being a dev in the US, u dont need a
| degree, learn a lot, can apply and get a great job."
|
| And on the other side, you can have a degree and experience
| and still not get a job due to the wild criteria and games
| that get played in various interviews.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I've been working in the tech industry for about twenty
| years now, and I desperately want unions. Sticking your
| neck out alone sucks to begin with and only sucks harder
| the more time goes forward.
| lc9er wrote:
| Same. Back when I first got into IT, I was surrounded by
| (similar) nerds whose self-esteem was defined by being
| the smartest person in the room. Compensation was often
| higher than other white-collar jobs, so they (we) were
| happy to overlook the long hours and non or poorly
| compensated on-call shifts.
|
| Most IT work now, whether dev or admin side, is not
| rocket science. It's mostly approachable work and no one
| should settle for being abused by employers for some
| outdated, ingrained, cultural baggage.
| acdha wrote:
| > As unions mature they protect the employment of their
| members, not prospective members who are unemployed
| applying for jobs.
|
| This is true in the same way that it's true that all
| democracies turn into the majority oppressing everyone
| else, or get captured by oligarchs, or vote to raise taxes
| to fund social until the economy collapses, etc. - which is
| to say not at all. Unions CAN fail that way but it's not a
| given. We shouldn't give up on a useful tool because it can
| be failed, we should talk about how to keep it healthy.
|
| For example, I've seen the no-degree route you talk about
| made easier by unions because it forced merit hiring rather
| than hiring more dudes with social ties from certain
| colleges. Again, that's not guaranteed - you'd be forgiven
| for wondering if the Teamsters were a deep cover operation
| to discredit the concept of unions - but social
| institutions aren't magic: they work to the extent that we
| make them work.
| vitaflo wrote:
| Devs are the factory workers of today. You're going to be
| sorry in 10 years when AI is fully mature and all the cheap
| talent overseas takes every US dev job just like it did to
| factory workers in the 90s and there's no unions to even
| attempt to slow it.
| codedokode wrote:
| And in an unlikely case that there were a union, US would
| lose competition to China and the union will be
| involuntarily disbanded.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Factory workers are the factory workers of today.
| billy99k wrote:
| Why add more gatekeepers to the industry? It also doesn't
| really make sense for an IT worker to want to negotiate as a
| collective when individual salary and benefits are some of
| the best in the world.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| The interview process in US is already insanely ridiculous, but
| this would only add an additional level of crazy to it.
| Honestly, licensing would be less bad by comparison.
| ahepp wrote:
| Can you describe what you see as the insanely ridiculous
| interview process? Most of the interviews I have initiated
| are something like: - 30 minute recruiter
| call - 30-60 minute manager call - 2x 60
| minute leetcode easy/medium - 1x 60 minute STAR
| behavioral - 1x 60 minute systems design or maybe
| doubling up on a previous category
|
| So for a total investment of what, 6 hours, I can go from a
| cold call to an offer of something like 150k-300k/y? And I'm
| not even playing in the FAANG ecosystem.
|
| I'm not sure if we are experiencing different processes, or
| we have different opinions about what kind of time / reward
| tradeoff is reasonable.
| snackbroken wrote:
| Everything except the 30-60 minute manager call is a waste
| of time and money for everyone involved.
|
| You just need to ask a couple of open-ended questions about
| the candidate's preferred programming language and/or some
| technical details of a past project they've worked on to
| get an idea of whether they are reasonably competent or
| not. It shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes to go
| through. The majority of rest of the meeting can consist of
| the candidate asking you questions and/or chit-chatting to
| make sure the vibes aren't off.
|
| What you are trying to judge is whether or not they can do
| the job, which you can really only tell once they are
| actually doing the job anyways. So you pay extra attention
| to what they do for the first couple of days/weeks after
| you've hired them and if it's obvious things are not going
| to work out you let them go. Most places have laws that are
| amenable to hiring someone on an initial trial period
| before stronger employee protections kick in.
|
| In general, most of the pathologies of the hiring process
| can be solved by treating it as a satisfier problem instead
| of an optimizer problem.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I don't really see north korean workers as any less deserving
| of work
| acdha wrote:
| That's not the question: it's about trust and honesty. The
| problem with North Korean workers is that they are a huge
| security risk because they aren't working as free people but
| as agents of their government. That might not be a guaranteed
| disaster if they're just generating cash revenue but it's a
| huge security risk if the North Korean government has any
| reason to subvert your company or customers.
| mcv wrote:
| Maybe first give them freedom. As long as their CVs are fake,
| their faces and experience are fake, and they're spying for
| their government, nobody should be hiring them.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Eh we're all victims of where we were born. I'm not about
| to hold someone's state against them. Unless i suppose it's
| a certain state that didn't exist 100 years ago and had to
| forcibly move people to make room.
| mosdl wrote:
| Wouldn't the issue be that an interview center could take money
| to lie/etc? When I start a job I would have to go through I-9
| verification - if that process is not good enough to weed out
| fakes, how would another verification work better?
| cyberax wrote:
| > Wouldn't the issue be that an interview center could take
| money to lie/etc? When I start a job I would have to go
| through I-9 verification - if that process is not good enough
| to weed out fakes, how would another verification work
| better?
|
| You just need to have a US citizen's SSN and birthday to beat
| the I-9 verification. And "beat" is a strong word. I-9 is
| just a form that the employer asks the employees to submit,
| there's no requirement for the employer to do anything with
| it.
|
| So you can just say that your SSN is 555-55-5555 and your
| birthday is 01-01-2001 and you'll "pass" the verification.
| It'll be detected only when the employer submits the
| Form-944.
|
| There's E-Verify that requires a picture ID and more
| information, but it's not mandatory.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I don't really understand the logistics of this to be honest.
| From the article it doesn't sound like these people have false
| IDs, they just make fake LinkedIn profiles?
|
| In a lot of countries certainly here in Germany your employer has
| to pay social security contributions and needs your insurance,
| healthcare information etc. In addition if you're a foreigner you
| need to know their legal status to see if they can even work.
| Like what do these scammed companies do, just wire money to some
| guy they interviewed on social media and ship company property to
| random addresses? Is that even legal in most places?
| trinix912 wrote:
| They presumably wire the money to a person operating in the US
| who sends a portion of that money to the NK employee. The US
| person is then the one in the company payroll files. At least
| that's my understanding.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| We should definitely go after those folks, but it's not
| pleasant, as many of them may be having their own issues that
| add to the problem.
|
| One of the big problems with the US, is that we worship money
| like a god. People will do almost anything, and compromise
| all their personal values, for money. We have entire
| industries that sell narratives, rationalizing these
| compromises.
|
| This is exacerbated by the current employment problems. They
| keep talking about how unemployment is down, but I think we
| all know folks that are un (or under-) employed, and the
| difficulties they are having, finding work.
|
| Someone in that state, is fertile ground for money- and job-
| laundering bad actors. It sucks to punish them, but that is
| what we need to do, to discourage the practice.
| collingreen wrote:
| I agree but I don't actually feel bad about punishing
| people for committing fraud (as long as we punish all
| people fairly, etc).
|
| > People will do almost anything, and compromise all their
| personal values, for money
|
| I think this demonstrates what their ACTUAL values are or
| at get very least the priority of those values.
| t-3 wrote:
| > One of the big problems with the US, is that we worship
| money like a god. People will do almost anything, and
| compromise all their personal values, for money.
|
| A US person without adequate cashflow is likely to not be
| able to have food, housing, clothing, medical care, etc. A
| lack of morals are not what causes people to do anything to
| make money, it's a lack of money in a capitalist society.
| Blaming people for systemic problems is incredibly
| regressive.
| sylens wrote:
| That's part of what is being exposed here. The hiring process
| for many companies is not very robust. I doubt many even check
| references
| acdha wrote:
| In three decades, I've had some call me to check a reference
| only twice for private sector jobs. The federal government
| actually does this as part of background checks so it works
| but you need to want to badly enough to pay real money.
|
| The other problem is liability: companies often tell their
| employees not to give references for fear of being sued if
| the employee doesn't work out, and most companies don't
| expect useful information from them unless someone left in a
| way which has a public record like a court case. The federal
| checks don't have that problem because not answering honestly
| is a crime. You'd need some kind of shield for honest
| statements for the private sector to really get accurate
| assessments, and that's tricky to do in a way which allows
| the most useful opinions.
| toast0 wrote:
| My understanding is for a US employee, the employer is supposed
| to confirm eligibility to work in the first 3 days of
| employment. Some form of government id plus a social security
| card or a passport or something like that. IRS form I-9
|
| Otoh, if these positions are independent contractors, form I-9
| isn't required. Just a tax id for reporting purposes.
|
| I would imagine whoever is hosting the laptops may be
| authorized to work in the US and could also be convinced to
| provide identity documentation. I think there's a lot of
| borrowing of documentation by immigrants/migrants who are not
| authorized to work in the US; so there's probably a marketplace
| somewhere too.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Maybe this, with mandatory senior executive and board
| accountability, will be the wakeup call to stop the outsourcing
| problem of the last 50 years.
| deadbabe wrote:
| What problem
| rwmj wrote:
| What does this have to do with outsourcing?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| It's about incentives.
|
| Direct impact: Outsourcing breeds a culture of unverified and
| verified-just-once remote work.
|
| Indirect impact: Outsourcing is a cost-driven effort where
| after a certain level of competence, the bottom-line is the
| only measurable metric that matters so it's a race to the
| bottom with patchwork efforts to "fix" issues like OP.
|
| Making domestic options cost-equivalent with punitive
| outcomes for hiring NK workers.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| This is about in-house employees. Not outsourcing.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| This has nothing to do with outsourcing. These guys are getting
| hired as permanent employees as often as they're being engaged
| as contractors.
| alganet wrote:
| I think the paranoia and fear this kind of idea promotes is
| perhaps the point of all of it.
|
| Why this is being discussed publicly? It seems way more
| reasonable to inform IT companies directly, or investigate it
| outside media attention.
|
| Also, we need steps towards reducing the possible tools that fake
| workers could leverage. These steps would put a strain on some
| recent technological developments. A strange and wild paradox.
| markerz wrote:
| Why try to hide it? It's like public disclosures of security
| vulnerabilities. You directly contact the few people who have
| actionable data and means to address the problem, then you tell
| the world that they're impacted and should be aware that such a
| problem exists so we don't repeat it.
| alganet wrote:
| Private disclosures for more sensitive vulnerabilities are a
| recommended practice. In your analogy, that's why I aluded
| to.
|
| In such cases, you only share the sensitive vulnerability
| publicly once there is a fix. For this case, there seems to
| be no fix.
|
| One could think of it as a way to promote more scrutinized
| hiring processes, but it actually encourages widespread
| paranoia and fear.
|
| It seems your analogy is valid, but the conclusion is that it
| supports what I said.
| brookst wrote:
| I'm not sure it's good for anyone to keep SMB's in the dark, as
| they have the most surface area and least expertise and budget
| to respond. It seems like a net benefit to publicize the issue
| and get every IT hiring manager thinking about it.
| alganet wrote:
| Can you elaborate more? It seems that you disagree but I'm
| missing the rationale behind it.
| brookst wrote:
| Keeping it quiet and only disclosing to larger firms means
| that lots of small firms will hire these people, with the
| economic and IP harms they entails.
| alganet wrote:
| As you said, small businessess have less expertise and
| budget to deal with the problem.
|
| Telling your gramma she has a virus only makes her become
| afraid, she won't magically gain the ability to identify
| it. That's my whole reasoning here. It makes things
| worse.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Inform what companies directly? If it's this pervasive, that's
| not going to be effective.
|
| I work at a small (~30 person) SaaS company. We interviewed
| what I took to be a case of this the other day (all the classic
| signs). Nobody would be keeping an eye on our hires or letting
| us know about this.
|
| And in the process of confirming that this was fishy, I
| contacted one of the past employers he claimed after doing my
| best to confirm _they_ weren't in any way part of the scam.
| They confirmed he had never worked there. I sent them his
| LinkedIn and portfolio site in case they wanted to chase down
| getting their name removed.
|
| They told me that this was super concerning because the
| screenshots in his portfolio of the app he worked on for them
| were real screenshots... for an unreleased app that was only
| available internally and had never even been demoed for
| clients.
|
| They'd already been breached and had god knows what
| exfiltrated. They found out because we caught an attempt to get
| hired at _our_ company and let them know.
|
| Nobody outside of a couple of technical staff at our company
| had even _heard_ of this. Nobody at the other company had. The
| fix, to me, seems to be making people involved in hiring more
| aware of this. If anything, it seems we should be talking about
| this _more_ and _more publicly_.
| alganet wrote:
| Is your company involved in infrastructural or emerging tech
| in any way?
|
| Forgive my frankness, but these worries about infiltrators
| have priority in important, large companies. I am very sure
| agencies responsible for this can contact these handful of
| important companies directly.
|
| So, you're right. In the current age we live in, no one cares
| about your small SaaS company, and you're being used to
| spread unecessary paranoia and fear.
| jjmarr wrote:
| North Korea has a shortage of foreign currency.
|
| It's not just espionage. They need US dollars to pay for
| smugglers.
| alganet wrote:
| Greed meets greed. Companies hiring cheap labor, being
| exploited in several fronts.
|
| It was a decision for several companies to spread thin
| their offshore hiring. They practically invited
| infiltrators in.
|
| Keep focused. Small companies never mattered for nations,
| they are irrelevant. Spreading paranoia will not solve
| their over-reliance on this exploited offshore problem.
| It will likely lead them to bankrupcy.
|
| Ultimately, it doesn't invalidate what I said. It
| actually makes my comment more relevant.
| cyberax wrote:
| > It was a decision for several companies to spread thin
| their offshore hiring. They practically invited
| infiltrators in.
|
| It's not offshore. Infiltrators are pretending that
| they're in the US. I first saw this 2 years ago, and they
| were pretty clumsy back then: always blurred background
| (and refusing to unblur it) and/or doing calls from a
| windowless office. You could even see their eyes moving,
| like they're reading the script.
|
| This year they became much fancier. They use backgrounds
| with the real time-of-day and weather illumination. The
| eyes no longer move unnaturally, etc.
| alganet wrote:
| You miss the point.
|
| Remote working is in the same vein as offshoring. One
| enables the other, they're co-dependent. Both are based
| on greed. In the case of remote working, is avoiding
| having offices, avoiding paying certain kinds of
| insurance, etc.
|
| You are also re-inforcing my original conclusion that
| what enables these workers is the very same tech that
| companies are investing on.
|
| Again, greed meets greed.
|
| Now it's too late. IT companies will not survive a full
| return to office, and they won't survive remote working
| as well.
|
| The very idea that someone could be using technology to
| fake an identity was unthinkable. Now that it is not,
| there's really no place safe.
|
| If a crisis occours, and the US president goes to Air
| Force 1, transmits from there, how could you be sure he's
| not a north korean infiltrator? You can't.
|
| I think there are still ways out of this, but we're
| reaching an inflection point that will be hard to
| overcome.
|
| ---
|
| Your commentary seems to provide a valid point of view,
| and although you disagree, you reinforce my main point.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Other company was, indeed, AI Startup #528532.
|
| We're in a niche, extremely boring industry. We have an
| extremely small client base. We do line-of-business/sales
| management applications for something akin to like... light
| switches and light fixtures. The most exclusive thing we
| have access to is wholesale pricing from manufacturers. We
| don't handle payments. The extent of PII we handle is "name
| and email" from when someone emails out a quote.
|
| We are the epitome of uninteresting to a foreign actor.
| Being "uninteresting" apparently does not disqualify you.
|
| We also do not hire overseas (the applicant claimed to be
| from California) and offer a good US wage. We weren't
| targeted or vulnerable because we were being "greedy".
| bn-l wrote:
| 30 people. Damn. I suppose they must be casting a massive
| net. Pretty concerning.
| cyberax wrote:
| > I work at a small (~30 person) SaaS company. We interviewed
| what I took to be a case of this the other day (all the
| classic signs). Nobody would be keeping an eye on our hires
| or letting us know about this.
|
| I'm in a similar situation. The HR leads company is trying to
| filter out the fakes, but they can't catch everyone.
|
| Apparently, the infiltrators specifically target the
| companies in the 10-50 people range. In smaller companies
| everybody knows what everybody else is doing, so infiltrators
| will be swiftly uncovered. And larger companies typically
| have a well-established HR department that will catch obvious
| fakes without good cover.
|
| But these mid-range companies provide the best chance for the
| fakes to get at least a couple of paychecks before being
| uncovered. And they likely won't bother with going to the FBI
| to chase down the payments.
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| > Why this is being discussed publicly? It seems way more
| reasonable to inform IT companies directly, or investigate it
| outside media attention.
|
| One key component for this scheme to work is to have local US
| persons act as intermediaries. While some may already know
| something shady is going on, and be complicit, some might not
| understand the entire scope of what they're being part of.
| Publicly discussing it _might_ encourage some people to come
| forward / avoid being involved in the future.
| fuzzzerd wrote:
| Living up to your screen name I see, but in all seriousness,
| I fully agree. The average person running the laptops in a
| spare bedroom may have no idea the scope of what they're
| involved with. Especially if they're being duped as well.
|
| Imagine a non technical person being told they're helping run
| an "edge data center, close to the users. Running our laptops
| helps Netflix/facebook/etc (insert big tech name of your
| choice) run faster for you and your neighbors and well pay
| you to do it."
|
| Easy to imagine a non technical person buying that lie.
| alganet wrote:
| I'm having a hard time understanding your imagined
| scenario.
|
| Can you please explain it better?
| alganet wrote:
| My imagination is very expansive, I can come up with grand
| scopes that movies and conspiracy theorists would never dream
| of.
|
| Reality is much simpler though. Greed, I already said it.
| Typical human defects.
|
| It seems that you are not comprehending who needs to come
| forward. Entire industries, entire parties. They simply
| won't, they would rather see the world burn than admit such
| mistakes. It has happened before.
| pxc wrote:
| It's been over 75 years. It could not be clearer that this
| attempt to punish the ordinary people who live in North Korea for
| having a government that the US finds disagreeable will not
| succeed in somehow fomenting revolution. What it _has_ succeeded
| in doing, apparently, is sustaining a level of poverty and
| isolation that motivates even crazy schemes like this.
|
| Here's how to actually stop it: stop weaponizing poverty to beat
| a Cold War-era dead horse, and end the damn sanctions.
| dontTREATonme wrote:
| Ah yes, bec that's worked out so well with china.
|
| Anyone with internet access in NK is working at the behest of
| the government.
| trallnag wrote:
| Russia was an important trading partner for many European
| countries. Especially important for Germany. Basically no
| sanctions. Freedom of movement with fairly good visa policies.
| No great internet firewall. How much did all this help to
| prevent another huge war between two European countries?
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Exactly. Trade ties only go so far.
|
| But this pov isn't always rooted in pragmatism. Free market
| ideologues also think that free markets will bring world
| peace.
| pxc wrote:
| Different behaviors have different motivations, contexts, and
| causes. It's extremely clear that these, like other criminal
| moneymaking schemes in the DPRK, are directly and closely
| related to the high degree of isolation of the DPRK and the
| difficulty of getting capital into it.
|
| Of course lifting the sanctions won't also end all spycraft,
| or ensure an end to geopolitical conflict. Those aren't
| things I have claimed or would claim.
|
| And the primary reason to end such sanctions is not any
| benefit to imperialist nations but because of the fact that
| they inflict misery on ordinary people indefinitely and (not
| essential, but adding insult to injury) uselessly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they inflict misery on ordinary people indefinitely_
|
| Pyongyang was making its people miserable before there were
| sanctions. America isn't at the centre of the universe--we
| didn't cause every geopolitical ripple that ever was.
| pxc wrote:
| [delayed]
| ta1243 wrote:
| Have your new hire turn up and meet with the team on day one.
|
| They'll soon twig if that's not the person who's getting called
| into a quick meeting in 5 minutes to discuss some new issue.
| conradev wrote:
| I can't find the tweet but apparently you can also filter these
| folks out by asking them to criticize Kim Jong Un
| ghssds wrote:
| If someone asked me to criticize KJU, that would be the end of
| the conversation. I criticize people on my own or not at all. I
| suppose I would become a false positive.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Sounds just like something a North Korean would say
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Honestly, sounds like a red flag if even a legitimate
| applicant is unwilling to voice an opinion on the Kim
| regime.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Without context it seems like a weird trick question,
| like phishing tests and most corporate training.
| codedokode wrote:
| Replace North Korean leader with Biden and Trump, how
| that sounds?
| brookst wrote:
| Even with the context of knowing the fake worker problem?
|
| If so, I suppose that's another good reason to ask the
| question. It filters out both North Korean fakes and people
| who are going to be doctrinaire about small things.
| kome wrote:
| perhaps a better solution would be to ask an opinion about
| KJU... not to "criticize" him this feels pretty dystopic
| indeed, like 15m of hate...
| collingreen wrote:
| It was 2 min of hate ;) and this clearly isn't the same
| as trying to rile people up; it's a thin attempt to get
| people to self report if they are lying with some sort of
| higher level "gotcha".
|
| Feels like the story about disconnecting Chinese gamers
| from matches automatically by typing "tiananmen square"
| or the story of the Battle of Siffin with one side
| putting pages of the quoran on their spears in hopes the
| enemy wouldn't fight that way. Unclear how accurate the
| stories are or how effective it may have been but kind of
| interesting at least.
| acdha wrote:
| I'd be shocked if that was still true after the first time
| someone tried it. If you're running an undercover operation,
| you're going to give your agents backing to say whatever they
| need to say to maintain their cover.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| So, again, the answering to this and most every other hiring ill
| in software over the past 15-20 years is... licensing.
|
| So, let's think about this logically. There is no baseline of
| candidate identification or competence in software and the jobs
| pay very well in physically comfortable conditions. It makes
| sense that unqualified liars would apply for these positions. Why
| shouldn't they? I am honestly curious how far the fraud and
| incompetence can go and devalue the industry before someone cares
| enough to tackle the problem l.
| hollerith wrote:
| Irrelevant to the OP unless you explain why North Koreans would
| be prevented from obtaining these licenses: it's not like there
| aren't competent developers in North Korea.
|
| If your explanation is that the license grantor will verify
| that the applicant is a resident of a Western country, than the
| employer can just do the same verification of job applicants,
| dispensing with the need for the occupational license.
| acdha wrote:
| The way these people are being caught are things like dodgy
| LinkedIn profiles or refusing in person meetings so I would
| think a licensing process designed around things which would
| be expensive to fake: in person government ID checks,
| periodic exams, peer evaluations, etc. The trick would be
| actually doing that in person, which could be a useful thing
| for conferences - treat an afternoon at PyCon or re:Invent as
| the cost of renewing your professional credentials if you
| don't live near a major city or university.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Even an in person ID check would suffice.
|
| For most of the West, this is an extremely difficult bar to
| clear for a North Korean national working out of China.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| I recommend researching what comprises professional
| licensing. If you have absolutely no frame of reference I can
| understand why you would be so confused.
| hollerith wrote:
| OK, so you cannot answer my question.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| Why would I? I don't think you would understand the
| answer.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| The answer to this is for companies to do even a modicum of
| personnel vetting.
|
| At the very least, make your remote candidate show up in person
| for their onboarding. A plane ticket and a few days of
| accomodation and meals is cheap in the grand scheme of things,
| and giving the opportunity to meet their team is good
| relationship building.
|
| Sight their ID before you issue them with an account, give them
| a laptop etc.
| austin-cheney wrote:
| > The answer to this is for companies to do even a modicum of
| personnel vetting.
|
| They do. That is clearly not enough.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| They generally make no enquiries at all into the
| applicant's bona fides.
|
| The candidate sends in fake or stolen documents where the
| picture on the drivers license doesn't even vaguely
| resemble the person who appeared on Zoom.
|
| When you have an applicant who says they were born in
| Tennessee and that they've apparently lived in the U.S. for
| their whole life, you would normally expect them to speak
| English with native proficiency and at least have an
| American-sounding accent.
|
| If they say they live in, say, Seattle, you'd expect they
| could carry on at least a basic conversation about their
| local area.
|
| Even this basic level of attention to detail nonetheless
| escapes many HR departments and hiring managers.
| dakiol wrote:
| If only governments could provide a very simple "check identity"
| service online. I think this should be a basic service nowadays.
| stanac wrote:
| I am not sure it would resolve the issue. About 10 or so years
| ago I was contacted on LinedIn with offer to "rent my name and
| face" for a team of Chinese remote workers (probably not those
| exact words). I rejected the offer without asking for details.
| Not sure if they were actually from China.
| dakiol wrote:
| If you sell your identity, you are accountable. That works in
| real life too; So there's less incentive in doing it.
| Swizec wrote:
| > If only governments could provide a very simple "check
| identity" service online. I think this should be a basic
| service nowadays.
|
| Slovenia issues personal certificates so you can identify
| yourself online. Mostly used for banking and e-gov. The
| commercial space has decided it's too cumbersome.
|
| Fantastic idea. Started rolling out when I was in college some
| 15 years ago. You go to the same place that issues your govt ID
| and you can also get the equivalent of an SSH cert issued by
| the government that guarantees you are you, your identity was
| verified at point of issuance, etc.
|
| Unfortunately it's about as fiddly to use as SSH. Okay for
| nerds, way cumbersome for normal humans who just want to log
| into their bank and pay their taxes damn it. Last I remember
| (moved to USA ~10 years ago) getting their e-signing browser
| widgets/extensions to work reliably on non-windows machines was
| hell. Most Mac/Linux users ran a whole VMWare VM just to do
| taxes once a year.
| immibis wrote:
| Imagine if you had to provide your government ID to use any
| website.
|
| Even for employment I find the idea iffy, but seeing as it's
| in response to an actual non-imagined problem, I suppose it's
| the most reasonable solution to that...
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Isn't that what the E-Verify [1] system was supposed to be?
| Several companies are now discovering it's not all it's cracked
| up to be, as ICE shows up at their door.
|
| [1] https://www.e-verify.gov/
| antonvs wrote:
| E-verify is just to check employment authorization, it's not
| a general identity service.
| mcny wrote:
| We don't need a general identity service though. We need to
| know whether someone is authorized to work for a US
| employer, right? How can a DPRK worker have the necessary
| authorization? If they use someone else's identity, isn't
| that something e verify should catch? If these are US
| citizens/nationals/residents working out of DPRK, who
| cares?
| jfengel wrote:
| They can buy, steal, or hire yours. If it were a general
| identity service, yours would get tracked. But if it's
| just a matter of authorization, with no authentication,
| they'd just use it indefinitely.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Yes. It confirms someone with a particular name, DOB, and
| SSN is authorized to work in the US. It doesn't confirm
| that the person claiming to be that person actually is that
| person. It relies on the employer to be able to match the
| applicant to the photo in e-verify, which isn't always an
| easy task.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Yeah, lets give the fascists full identity tracking tools.
| codedokode wrote:
| They provide, don't they? In Russia there are "gosuslugi"
| (government services) that banks and other organizations can
| use to confirm identity. However, if you sign up, then you will
| receive draft notices for military service through the app so
| you better not sign up.
| belter wrote:
| Something is amiss here...Developers make hundreds of
| applications to even get a reply much less an interview...While
| apparently, barely English literate North Korean IT workers are
| getting all the jobs :-) Time to praise the Supreme Leader on
| LinkedIn ?
| sfryxell wrote:
| I have gotten multiple emails from wonky email addresses
| offering to have me interview for jobs and they will take care
| of the work if I get hired. fake names tons of money for me. I
| just have to nail the interview.
|
| My resume is shiny enough and I've gotton hired enough times im
| a good candidate for this kind of scam.
|
| This feels like a very ham fisted approach for them though. 99%
| of engineers are going to ignore or not take seriously these
| kinds of out of the blue offers.
| sva_ wrote:
| They probably use many identities
| mkl95 wrote:
| > As US-based companies become more aware of the fake IT worker
| problem, the job seekers are increasingly targeting European
| employers, too.
|
| All the US companies I've worked for made sure I was legit before
| I could log into anything, so I assume background checks to be
| ubiquitous there, save for the cheapest companies. European
| employers on the other hand...
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