FBI warns of North Korean cyberspies posing as foreign IT workers Pay close attention to that resume before offering that work contract. The FBI, in a joint advisory with the US government Departments of State and Treasury, has warned that North Korea's cyberspies are posing as non-North-Korean IT workers to bag Western jobs to advance Kim Jong-un's nefarious pursuits. In guidance [PDF] …
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"He was simply following the example set by many large companies in outsourcing his labour requirements to a cheaper source."
It's more like he's using that predilection to worm into ways of exploiting the decadent West.
If you want to play the evil villain, what better thing than to have your own nation to operate from. <insert evil laughter and a volcanic background>
Silly me. There's always a 'nefarious motive' where those foreign types are involved.
Just think how many people would be out of a job if we dialed back all that them/us nonsense -- all those sanctions enforcement personnel, spies and counter spies, think tanks, pools of experts divining what whoever had for breakfast. I reckon half our economy must be riding on this stuff (and the other half goes to pay for it). Obviously we wouldn't switch it all off, just dial it back to a prudent level. (...and maybe deploy some of the displaced FBI types as IT workers?)
(In other news the "Disinformation Governance Board", a newly minted component of our "Department of Homeland Security" has been 'paused', probably due to excessive lampooning and unwarranted comparisons with Orwell's MinTruth.)
Ok I can see the possibilty. However, how are these evil DPRK spies getting these jobs in the first place? I can't imagine that the English (or other) language skills of your average DPRK dev are all that good, given their education system and lack of (official) access to actual foreign language speakers. How are they passing interviews? So how successful is this "posing"? How many actual cases have there been?
This sounds a bit like "Furriners! Can't trust them you know" to me.
"I can't imagine that the English (or other) language skills of your average DPRK dev are all that good, given their education system and lack of (official) access to actual foreign language speakers."
The people being interviewed are highly trained in language skills and coached in real time how to answer the questions in a live interview. It's very common for people on computer conference calls to be wearing headphones/ear buds. Whose to say they aren't being fed answers by a subject matter expert. How hard would it be for the DPRK to set up an office in India to make a company think they are hiring a programmer from India? The front could be staffed and managed by Indian nationals but owned by Mr Kim with only a couple of IT people knowing that data is being mirrored with modifications being injected into the delivered product if wanted.
This is the same as hiring somebody to sit an exam for you in a large lecture class where the professor has no idea who their students are (since TA's proctor the exams) and ID isn't being demanded to sit the test. These frees up your time to concentrate on doing well in lab where you won't have that option.
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