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North Korean IT workers have infiltrated the Fortune 500
- gnabgib 2y agoOriginal source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43614661 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43614661 (19 points, 7 hours ago, 6 comments)
- CSMastermind 2y agoMy company accidently employed on for about 3 days until we realized what was happening and cut them loose. I recognize this was likely sourced from a PR agency working for a security product meant for global employee verification but I can attest they are addressing a real problem.
- xxr 2y agoHow did you figure out what was going on?
- CSMastermind 2y agoLots of red flags in the paperwork combined with strange behavior and him accidentally connecting one time without a VPN. We're a startup so I don't think the end goal was to scam us per se but more to get money or more likely build credibility.
- KiranRao0 2y agoEverything I hear something like “to get money and more credibility”, I can’t help myself thinking of the Key and Peele sketch about robbing a bank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceijkZQI1HM&pp=ygUZUm9iIGEgYmFuayBrZXkgYW5kIHBlZWxlIA%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceijkZQI1HM&pp=ygUZUm9iIGEgY...
- yieldcrv 2y agoThats literally whats happening. They aren’t “infiltrating”, they’re doing the work and building your products Its the most benign thing ever and more akin to violating work authorization than IT security issues or economic sanctions
- kevmo314 2y agoI too work to get money or more likely build credibility.
- aussieguy1234 2y agoThey were probably "severely punished" for the slip up of not using their VPN...
- verisimi 2y agoI can't believe that this would be an option they would be able to adjust.
- pants2 2y agoHow is your recruiting process going to improve to catch that in the future? Seems like a pretty big screwup, hopefully he wasn't given any sort of admin access.
- discordance 2y agoAre the interviews remote and with webcams off? - Do the North Korean candidates have American accents?
- jgyter 2y ago[flagged]
- iJohnDoe 2y agoI don’t understand this. There are well qualified legitimate candidates desperate for a job. How are North Koreans getting these jobs instead? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43612448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43612448
- fooker 2y ago> well qualified legitimate candidates How do you choose between a well qualified legitimate candidate and a extremely well qualified 'appears to be' legitimate candidate? These people are presumably not advertising themselves to be from Pyongyang.
- OhioMan2943 2y agoIs this to imply that north Koreans can't be well qualified legitimate candidates?
- bluefirebrand 2y agoWell qualified, sure Legitimate? Seems unlikely, given the state of affairs in North Korea
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- slt2021 2y agothey are not being hired using their NK identity. For all intents and purposes they look like American or Asian(Vietnam/China/etc)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- behringer 2y agoLegitimate? You do realize it's illegal to hire NK workers in most civilized countries?
- throwaway2037 2y agoThis part is genius: > Nowadays, Leggio told Fortune he won’t even set up an interview with a candidate who seems promising on paper unless they agree to one final step. “Say something negative about Kim Jong Un,” Leggio tells potential job candidates, referring to the third-generation authoritarian Supreme Leader of North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Through research, Leggio learned insulting the DPRK’s Supreme Leader is forbidden, and North Korean citizens could face serious punishment for showing anything less than reverence. “The first time I ever did it, the person started freaking out and cursing,” said Leggio. The job seeker subsequently blocked Leggio across all social media platforms. Now Leggio makes the same request before every single interview. Other startups and founders he knows are asking the same thing of job seekers, he said.
- rdtsc 2y agoI love it. That’s genius. Though I wonder if they’d be a special exception: You can talk bad about Kim if American Evil Capitalists force you as long as you get in and bring in the dough. I am afraid they are a lot more cynical than we give them credit, though.
- bee_rider 2y agoI wonder how effective the propaganda apparatus in inside North Korea really. And also… I wonder if there’s a bit of a gap of stuff that is, like, not something that a westerner would be aware of. Like if the person says “the carrot harvest was terrible last year and the uniforms are very itchy, it’s like he’s correctly but annoyingly prioritizing other things” they might be a spy. I mean that is a silly example but you get the idea hopefully.
- rdtsc 2y ago> I wonder how effective the propaganda apparatus in inside North Korea really. Elites I am guessing can probably afford to be a bit cynical in private. And people interviewing at these companies are probably closer to being elites than peasants. But if they are monitored, showing any dislike or disloyalty in public is probably not something they can risk. Even if it means tricking the “dirty American capitalists”. There would have to be an unofficial nod from above “you can do it, just don’t overdoit”. Say “the harvest was bad” but say nothing about the uniform being itchy. Our dear leader sowed them with his own hands!
- throwaway_ab 2y agoA flagged post mentions this is racist and typical anti immigration rhetoric. That's not true, there are only two types of North Korean people you'll meet, either those that have defected and escaped North Korea or those that are agents of the state of North Korea. There are very few defectors in existence and once they escape they're given full South Korean citizenship. This article is not about those people. The vast majority of North Koreans outside North Korea are not defectors, instead they are controlled state assets. There are no North Korean people outside the country that are free citizens. Every single North Korean authorised to leave the country is working directly for their government often to raise money for the regime, to steal IP, to infiltrate for some nefarious purpose. Having one of these North Korean active assets in your company is extremely dangerous, your business is now at risk of leaks, theft, or worst something being modified like added vulnerabilities that could be exploited later in cyber attacks. So no, this article is not racist at all and really has nothing to do with the recent political situation.
- tkel 2y agoYou're doing the racist rhetoric. There's no one in north korea that isn't "an agent of the state"? Give me a break. You sound ridiculous.
- Boltgolt 2y agoThere's no one _outside_ north korea
- rurban 2y agoNope, those IT specialists are everywhere. It's tricky to weed out spies, if they are American ("Tell me a bad thing about Donald Trump"), Australians, Chinese, Russian or North Korean. That's why you have recruiters doing background checks.
- infecto 2y agoIs it really racist? North Korea is the most tightly controlled country in the world. Seems too easy to just throw out the racist card when you did not refute or provide any counter point. I am certain there are good people in North Korea but it would be hard to figure folks allegiances. A lifetime of propaganda can really do something to the mind.
- germandiago 2y ago[flagged]
- behringer 2y agovaccinations work and COVID was real. You need to come back to reality.
- wellackshually 2y ago[flagged]
- cootsnuck 2y agoSo whenever I have gotten a job in tech, I've had to complete a background check if I get the job offer. How exactly are these fake profiles passing basic background checks? They would have to be impersonating real people if pretending to be Americans. Unless these companies aren't doing the most basic background checks beyond just looking at resumes and LinkedIn profiles. Pretty weird and seems not too difficult to prevent...
- davideg 2y agoThe article gets into this where real Americans do job interviews and if they get a job they can keep 30% of the salary and have to pass off the remaining 70%: > In the IT worker scheme, once someone involved gets an interview, North Koreans use remote-desktop tools to help coach people through the Q&A with a recruiter. > Aidan Raney, founder of Farnsworth Intelligence, posed as an American willing to help North Koreans to investigate the issue for a client who almost hired a fake engineer. During the course of two video calls with three or four people who all said their names were “Ben,” Raney learned the details. “The Bens” would handle all the upfront work for him—creating a fake LinkedIn profile to verify his new identity for U.S. recruiters, formulating a bio, and sending it out to dozens of job postings with a new Gmail address they set up. > The Bens even modified Raney’s headshot to a black-and-white photo so it wouldn’t resemble his usual picture, Raney told Fortune. If Raney got a job, he would show up for meetings, like a morning stand-up or scrum, and go about his day while a North Korean engineer handled the workload. Raney would be allowed to keep 30% of the salary but had to transfer 70% to the Bens using crypto, Paypal, or Payoneer. > “What they were trying to do was use my identity to bypass background checks, and so they wanted this fake persona they created to be extremely close to the real-life version,” said Raney. > The Bens got Raney an interview, and while it was ongoing, they used a remote-desktop application to set up a notepad on Raney’s screen so they could write out responses to the questions from the interviewer, Raney explained. And it worked: Raney got a verbal offer for a job with a private government contractor that paid $80,000 a year. > He then had to immediately turn around and tell the company he couldn’t accept the offer and apologize for claiming their time.
- behringer 2y ago
- gregdoesit 2y agoIf you think the issue of devs using fake identities is a problem limited to the Fortune 500: I talked with a 6-person startup who very nearly hired a person who could have been from anywhere else than they claimed, including North Korea. All they know is the candidate used an AI filter to make them look like a Polish person [1] - and this startup recorded when they caught this faker. This is a full-remote startup and they have now added a mandatory in-person interview to their recruitment loop. Amusingly, in their case, using local job boards did not help: they got candidates pretending to from Poland or Serbia, yet not speaking the language. A little sad to see how each episode like this casts more doubt and uncertainty into full-remote interviewing. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43340994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43340994
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- black_13 2y ago[dead]
- lmz 2y agoIt's great for the Norks but you have to wonder how the education pipeline works over there for these people? Do they go to special schools?
- Asraelite 2y ago> Do they go to special schools? Yes. https://www.yahoo.com/news/hermit-kingdom-north-korea-became-103620766.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/hermit-kingdom-north-korea-became...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- suraci 2y ago[flagged]
- wesselbindt 2y agoThank goodness the red scare is over and we live in a more enlightened age.
- metalman 2y agoWhoooeeee, I bet those companys heaved a sigh of relief to find out that they were hacked by North Korea, and not investigative jounrnalists or some uppity regulators, yup, just Emperor Kim takin his cut, and you know you can trust him to keep his mouth shut about anything he knows.