The North Korean fake IT worker problem is ubiquitous

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/13/fake_it_worker_problem/

by rntn • 1 year ago

307 342 1 year ago

anovikov• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

But when the FBI tells you, you might really have a problem, as happened at one company I was at several years ago.

NitpickLawyer3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Not sure why this is downvoted. There’s now abundant evidence it’s happening.

arresin2• 1 year ago

North Koreax folk

spydum• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Many users here don’t seem to understand that they are reading content marketing.

tropicalfruit• 1 year ago

company finally swipes right only to get catfished by a DPRK agent

nice

CyberMacGyver• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Speak some more on this.

grej• 1 year ago

Yes please, I'm also interested in hearing more about what you're building CyberMacGyver

triceratops• 1 year ago

I'm curious why free?

hnthrow90348765• 1 year ago

FWIW, it the "insult Kim Jong-Un" meme that's been going around doesn't work

jawiggins• 1 year ago

Did you try it? What did the person say?

hbs18• 1 year ago

How do you know?

Maxious• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

moffkalast2• 1 year ago

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.

Quitschquat• 1 year ago

amount per laptop per month

Curious what typical rates would be.

nradov2• 1 year ago

The Wall Street Journal had an article about the people running these North Korean laptop farms.

https://www.wsj.com/business/north-korea-remote-jobs-e4daa72...

snickerbockers2• 1 year ago

So I must be really dumb here but what exactly does the kvm do? It's just stated that it has an Ethernet port and an HDMI and therefore can remote control a computer? And he said the North Koreans are putting them on people's computers as if North Koreans breaking into people's apartments is a common occurrence we've all experienced? And why did the FBI contact him about this?

There's obviously some context I'm missing here, I always thought kvm was the Linux kennel virtualization system...

Thorrez• 1 year ago

KVM in this context stands for keyboard, video, mouse. There are multiple types of these KVMs, and the ones discussed here are remote KVMs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVM_switch#KVM_over_IP_(IPKVM)

It sounds like the North Koreans pay 1 person in the US to have a ton of laptops with KVMs attached to them, and those laptops are remotely used by North Koreans.

Not to be confused with Kernel-based virtual machine (also called KVM):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine

ianpurton• 1 year ago

I imagine they mean a remote KVM. So you remote into a PC sitting in a basement in someones house in the US. You then make all your outgoing internet from thta setup and your IP address would look legit.

krisoft2• 1 year ago

what exactly does the kvm do?

In this context the abbreviation stands for “keyboard, video, and mouse”. These are hardware devices you physically connect to a computer and then you can remotely see the computer’s screen and input keyboard and mouse inputs to it via the network.

It's just stated that it has an Ethernet port and an HDMI and therefore can remote control a computer?

Yes. That is the purpose of a KVM device.

he said the North Koreans are putting them on people's computers

What is described here is a scam perpetrated by North Korean state to gain funds despite economic sanctions trying to prevent it from doing so.

The scheme involves someone pretending to be a legitimate remote worker working from a legitimate location, but in reality they are performing the work from North Korea. The person working the remote IT job in North Korea gets a pitance, while the state pockets the larger part of the money paid to them.

As part of the scheme the remote worker gets a laptop from their western employer. Corporate IT installs all kind of security measures on the laptop, but also grants it means to access internal resources. The scammer can’t ship the laptop to North Korea and use it directly because if that gets detected they will be found out and fired. They also can’t install software based remote access tools because corporate IT might detect those too. So they use a KVM to remotely use the laptop from North Korea and stay on the job as long as they can.

as if North Koreans breaking into people's apartments is a common occurrence

The scheme does not involve North Koreans breaking into apartments.

And why did the FBI contact him about this?

Who knows. Jeff seems to have described how to use a particular cheap KVM in the past. Likely this KVM device is used by the scammers. Maybe he has connections to the KVMs manufacturer? Maybe the FBI thought he does?

I always thought kvm was the Linux kennel virtualization system...

Same abreviation, but different thing.

__david__• 1 year ago

KVM (keyboard, video, mouse): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVM_switch In particular, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KVM_switch#KVM_over_IP_(IPKVM)

It seems they don’t break into someone’s apartment but instead pay someone to stick a kvm connected laptop somewhere in the apartment.

AbstractH242• 1 year ago

Its not just North Koreans using them. Its also everyday US citizens who want to be digital nomads.

When i looked at https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/ a few years ago it didn't seem like any solution really worked reliably.

But if you had a farm of them and one guy maintaining them, rather than sticking it in your parents basement with nobody to maintain it, that might be something different.

giantg23• 1 year ago

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).

ChrisMarshallNY3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

Interesting idea! This seems like a natural extension of the coworking space business concept.

giantg23• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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_dev2• 1 year ago

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.

billy99k• 1 year ago

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.

Spooky234• 1 year ago

That’s not how unions work.

They are fine, but struggle with remote work in general because fundamentally the leverage the union has is a monopoly on labor, which is compromised by a global labor force.

Melatonic• 1 year ago

Exactly - it's too bad certain rich assholes back in the day squashed the unions forming for software devs and VFX workers

Aurornis7• 1 year ago

These people are using stolen identities of real people in many cases.

Or they’re applying as international remote workers, where you wouldn’t expect them to be members of your country’s union anyway.

Widespread union membership with verifications wouldn’t solve anything.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2• 1 year ago

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.

ahepp3• 1 year ago

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.

MangoToupe4• 1 year ago

I don't really see north korean workers as any less deserving of work

acdha8• 1 year ago

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.

mcv2• 1 year ago

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.

Aurornis7• 1 year ago

Please re-read the article: These aren’t helpless people looking for jobs where they can do good work. This is a state-sponsored activity to exfiltrate source code, customer data, and in many cases extort the companies by demanding ransoms.

mosdl2• 1 year ago

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?

cyberax7• 1 year ago

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.

smelendez• 1 year ago

Maybe.

You’d lose out on people who don’t live near an interview center and potentially have legal issues if people had disabilities that impacted their ability to travel to an interview center but not their ability to do the job.

Barbing2• 1 year ago

Maybe everyone who is enthusiastic about traveling to an interview center could do it, and the remainder can undergo heavy vetting? Perhaps a cost & safety optimized approach if tuned right.

Barrin92• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

ChrisMarshallNY3• 1 year ago

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.

sylens• 1 year ago

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

acdha8• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

esafak3• 1 year ago

They're targeting locales and companies with less stringent checks.

mathverse2• 1 year ago

Because it's contractors. You are not an employer in that person's country.

nobodyandproud5• 1 year ago

Maybe this, with mandatory senior executive and board accountability, will be the wakeup call to stop the outsourcing problem of the last 50 years.

rwmj• 1 year ago

What does this have to do with outsourcing?

nobodyandproud5• 1 year ago

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.

bigfatkitten4• 1 year ago

This has nothing to do with outsourcing. These guys are getting hired as permanent employees as often as they’re being engaged as contractors.

nobodyandproud5• 1 year ago

My mistake. I meant “off-shoring”.

This is only possible in the scale we see today, because of the infrastructure built to support off-shore and remote work.

alganet18• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

alganet18• 1 year ago

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.

brookst3• 1 year ago

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.

alganet18• 1 year ago

Can you elaborate more? It seems that you disagree but I'm missing the rationale behind it.

nucleardog3• 1 year ago

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_.

alganet18• 1 year ago

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.

cyberax7• 1 year ago

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.

NitpickLawyer3• 1 year ago

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.

fuzzzerd2• 1 year ago

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.

alganet18• 1 year ago

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.

pxc4• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

pxc4• 1 year ago

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.

ta1243• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

I can’t find the tweet but apparently you can also filter these folks out by asking them to criticize Kim Jong Un

ghssds2• 1 year ago

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.

pmarreck2• 1 year ago

Sounds just like something a North Korean would say

brookst3• 1 year ago

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.

acdha8• 1 year ago

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.

ipnon• 1 year ago

It's very naive to think you can win against any state-level advanced persistent threat.

nerdix3• 1 year ago

You'll likely have to be careful with profiling here. You'll probably need to have documentation/proof that you ask this question to all candidates regardless of race or immigration status. And yes, that means you'll need to ask it to people that clearly aren't North Korean (though that maybe be a good thing in general as I'm sure the next step for the NK regime would be to pay people who are not Asian or who have American accents to do interviews if the practice became widespread)

waffleiron• 1 year ago

Maybe more likely that they just assume they are caught, or assume the likelihood of getting caught is higher when there is overt screening for North Koreans.

Similar to why email scammers don’t need good grammar, filtering out difficult cases quickly and move on to easier ones.

austin-cheney6• 1 year ago

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.

hollerith2• 1 year ago

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.

acdha8• 1 year ago

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.

austin-cheney6• 1 year ago

I recommend researching what comprises professional licensing. If you have absolutely no frame of reference I can understand why you would be so confused.

bigfatkitten4• 1 year ago

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-cheney6• 1 year ago

The answer to this is for companies to do even a modicum of personnel vetting.

They do. That is clearly not enough.

lukaslalinsky2• 1 year ago

If there is an US person providing the identity, what's stopping them from also providing the license.

I guess the main problem is, if you are a company with bad management structure, and you see your new coworker has really weird patterns, inconsistencies in their talking, why would you tell the manager about it? You can just mind your own business. It was them who hired them after all.

austin-cheney6• 1 year ago

I don’t understand your question about licensing. A professional license isn’t a physical artifact.

Edit: If you don’t know what licensing is why are you replying to a comment about it? Most of the comments here read like this and it’s really weird.

dakiol3• 1 year ago

If only governments could provide a very simple “check identity” service online. I think this should be a basic service nowadays.

stanac• 1 year ago

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.

dakiol3• 1 year ago

If you sell your identity, you are accountable. That works in real life too; So there’s less incentive in doing it.

Swizec• 1 year ago

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.

immibis2• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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/

antonvs3• 1 year ago

E-verify is just to check employment authorization, it's not a general identity service.

codedokode3• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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• 1 year ago

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.

lazide• 1 year ago

1% will be plenty in the current market, eh?

sva_• 1 year ago

They probably use many identities

wisty• 1 year ago

People are single but romance scams exist.

Scammers are good at the scam. They are good at telling the right lies, they often work in teams (lead finders, closers, and everything in between), use automation where appropriate, etc.

A single dev might have trouble cracking the lead finding code, the resume code, the interview code, etc while and avoiding telling any lies that will get then fired 3 weeks into the job. But a team who all treat the application process as a full time job? It's a lot easier.

Also when a dev gets good at finding a job, they stop looking. Scammers get good at it and then keep getting better.

ryandrake3• 1 year ago

Maybe these North Korean scammers could make good money by selling their job application tips and tricks to actual talented out of work engineers. They seem to not be struggling to get these jobs, unlike actual developers who are struggling.

esafak3• 1 year ago

I would not say they are getting the jobs but they are getting interviews.

Aurornis7• 1 year ago

These people aren’t constrained by the bounds of reality. They’re applying with claims of having attended Harvard and then worked at Meta and now they’re applying to your company.

Their resume goes in front of yours in line.

mkl95• 1 year ago

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...

aleph_minus_one3• 1 year ago

European employers on the other hand...

Many European employers

- don't or rarely offer remote jobs, so they often don't have this problem.

- even if they do some video or phone interview for pre-screening, they nearly always expect the prospective employee to come to a live interview if they are not weeded out by this pre-screening. It is thus expected that you at least live in a country from where you can easily travel to the place where the employer is located.

- often expect their employees to be able to speak the national language, or at least learn it fast. This also makes times hard for North Korean fake IT workers.

rcruzeiro2• 1 year ago

I’ve never had this experience. Never once was I flew in for an interview and, in two of the previous companies I’ve worked for, I did not speak the language.

stevekemp• 1 year ago

I live in Finland, and while it is not universal it is extremely common for IT-companies to have a working-language of English.

The country is small and hires both immigrants, and people who specifically relocate to start working at the English-only companies, as well as local candidates.

Learning Finnish will obviously make your life easier, in many many ways, but companies themselves do not seem to expect or require it.

nerdix3• 1 year ago

The background checks don't always work because they typically use stolen identities or use the identities of Americans that they've paid. They basically have to in order to pass I-9 verification.

There are also different levels of background checks. For instance, previous employment verification can be time consuming so some companies skip it. Checking references aren't useful because they can be faked (you have to run background checks with employment verification on the references to make sure they are who they say they are).

cute_boi• 1 year ago

Yes, it generally don't work. Thats why you will find many F1 student with 8 years of experience.....

Spooky234• 1 year ago

That’s only one of the scams. You pass background checks if you’re new to the US. It’s a fairly common grift to place contract programmers at big companies with fake degrees and experience, who then send the work back to Asia to be done overnight. It’s easier now with ChatGPT - you can send photos of screens and instantly extract the text.

You also have people who outsource themselves. That’s one of the ways that the people who work multiple jobs pull it off.

chii• 1 year ago

You also have people who outsource themselves. That’s one of the ways that the people who work multiple jobs pull it off.

that's not a scam - that's the new work smarter, not harder method of earning money.

Aurornis7• 1 year ago

I’ve seen reports from people who were contacted by companies asking to use their identity for jobs. The deal was that the company used their likeness and identity to secure the job, but they would do all of the work and split the paycheck with them.

There are a million reasons why this is a bad idea, but I’m sure they don’t have trouble finding people excited to collect free paychecks.

SV_BubbleTime3• 1 year ago

We got catfished by an outsourcer on Upwork.

Great interview, good questions, really solid candidate.

His first day on the job, his English went to shit.

Then he refused to pick up the phone or call me back. Lame excuses about how it’s loud there, then he lost his voice, then scheduled a call with the real “Jeff” the American who couldn’t answer anything about what we had discussed an hour earlier.

Reported to Upwork but I sort of doubt they did much about it.

superb_dev• 1 year ago

I was once contacted on LinkedIn by an individual asking to use my identity to work in the US

roywashere• 1 year ago

I also got contacted via LinkedIn by a “normal” profile of a Dutch guy with normal connections, that was even connected to people I know, offering me the same. I politely suggested it’s not a great idea and declined

aitchnyu• 1 year ago

In Indian dev groups, we gets ads for "job support" and "interview support" for recruiting people into frauds.

const_cast6• 1 year ago

The thing I don't like is that US companies take it too far, to the point they're violating my privacy and making me uncomfortable.

Why do you need to do a hard credit check before you give me an offer? Why do you need to know exactly how much I owe on my credit cards, car, house, how much I'm paying per month, and how much I've made at every job for the past 7 years?

That feels... excessive. And weird. And kind of unfair. Now you know my paycheck, and the paycheck before that, and how desperate I am. Well, there goes negotiations.

asteroidburger2• 1 year ago

Who's doing a hard credit pull at all, especially before salary's negotiated and the offer's extended?

red_admiral3• 1 year ago

It feels like you're going through some kind of security clearance.

To be honest, getting insight and access to a major company's networks and maybe customer data is perhaps the same kind of risk to the company as it is for the government to give someone access to (top) secret files. It might not be so much a negotiating tactic as awareness that more sophisticated spies and criminals than the ones in the OP article are targeting your company.

AndyMcConachie2• 1 year ago

That feels... excessive. And weird. And kind of unfair. Now you know my paycheck, and the paycheck before that, and how desperate I am. Well, there goes negotiations.

I think that's partly the point.

stef25• 1 year ago

Where I am in Europe you couldn't even get a (legal!) job in a bar without showing proper ID, and having your identification (id card number) checked and be present in the contract.

The fact that "fake people" can be employed for high level IT companies in the US is just unfathomable to me.

Havoc• 1 year ago

Can’t they just make week 1 in person compulsory?

You can easily dress that up as an onboarding thing and would solve this, no?

someotherperson• 1 year ago

Not really. You need a visa (or equivalent) to enter most countries. This can take months to apply for and receive. And you can stretch that period out even longer by claiming that you don't have a passport and need to apply for one first.

aleph_minus_one3• 1 year ago

In Germany, if a company want to hire some talent from a foreign country, this problem is solved by the general rule "The employment starts as soon as the visa problems have been resolved, and you are in Germany." Big companies often have a department that helps with visa problems.

So, if you stretch the period, the employment simply starts later.

bravesoul24• 1 year ago

You can. Just like everyone can use a good password. Yet many dont.

Also there is a good reason not to make week 1 in person. You reduce your access to talent. I know we are in the everyone RTO and do 100hrs a week part of the BSiness cycle. But still.

ryandrake3• 1 year ago

Workers are currently in a bear market. No company has problems “accessing” talent, at least today. They aren’t going to lose a candidate by simply insisting on an in-person step, whether it be an in-person interview or a week of in-person work.

deathanatos5• 1 year ago

Also there is a good reason not to make week 1 in person. You reduce your access to talent.

… I don't think candidates are going to turn down a company in droves for an initial 1 week onsite. You make it sound like you're losing access to all remotes.

folkrav• 1 year ago

Assuming they have offices at all. My previous employer didn’t even have an office until 6 months after I was hired, and half the employees in the country were at the very minimum a decent 3-4h drive away from the office anyway. I’ve only ever met a handful of members of my team in person. The remaining employees were split up on 3 different continents.

Prickle• 1 year ago

They definitely can. For my first 3 months it was obligatory to show up to the office. The office was basically a apartment room, and very small. But it got the job done.

nerdix3• 1 year ago

A lot of companies have gone completely remote including a fully remote interview process because COVID basically mandated that and many companies kept doing it after COVID subsided because it was working.

But, yes, this will likely change that. In person interviews and onboarding will probably become the norm with fully remote teams as more companies become aware of the risks.

raverbashing3• 1 year ago

Can’t they just make week 1 in person compulsory?

Yes, but you'll have people making all kinds of excuses and how they only eat from this specific place that delivers on DoorDash and etc etc

(but honestly I think this would be an improvement)

jongjong• 1 year ago

I suspect it could be worse than that. It feels like certain countries' tech sectors are being partly taken over by IT workers from foreign intelligence agencies or from foreign entities with ulterior motives. Especially when you consider countries with small populations and few natives in the tech sector.

For example, in Australia, it seems like at least 8/10 software engineers are foreign-born. Most of those are probably genuine (not from intelligence agencies) but Australia has such a tiny native population of engineers compared to that of most foreign countries in its vicinity that it wouldn't be difficult for a country like China or India to overwhelm our tech industry with a few highly-placed workers in order to gain political leverage. I was thinking that there might be more software engineers working for Indian and Chinese intelligence agencies in the world than there are native-born software engineers in Australia (of all kinds). It's a numbers' game.

North Korea seems like the tip of the iceberg there though it is an easy example to talk about because everyone understands how the North Korean government operates and everyone agrees about the threat they pose compared to more subtle threats from other countries which aren't seen as opponents (at least not to the same extent).

But also, consider a company like Facebook which hires maybe 20K or so software devs. A country like India which has a large number of software developers, if it wanted, could easily put together a task force to infiltrate and take over Facebook in a focused decade-long effort if that was its intent. They almost certainly do have some people inside every major tech company right now.

If a group can have a few highly placed people inside a target company, they could then recruit more of their group into the company and start promoting their own until they have full control over the critical systems. It's a weakness of our current highly centralized tech sector.

Something else that could happen is a foreign intelligence agency could wait for people to get promoted naturally and then reach out to dual-nationals which they have leverage over (e.g. because of family members or assets owned in the foreign country) and then use that to demand favors. Then they could help coordinate the engineers to recruit more of their own to achieve even more control. Different groups would form factions within the target company and every normal employee would be unwittingly pushed out because anyone trying to 'improve or simplify things' would be seen as a threat to various nefarious agendas which rely on complexity to hide backdoors or algorithm exploits.

Imagine how valuable it would be if you could hijack's Google's search algorithm or Facebook's recommendation engines to prioritize your group's businesses and/or agendas.

Spooky234• 1 year ago

It’s likely that some variant of what you’re describing is actively taking place right now.

high_na_euv• 1 year ago

If a group can have a few highly placed people inside a target company, they could then recruit more of their group into the company and start promoting their own until they have full control over the critical systems. It's a weakness of our current highly centralized tech sector.

Isnt the critique of Indian managers that they favor indian ppl?

shivasaxena• 1 year ago

That critique is by the same section of our society that also believes that it's the "jews" that are behind this so ...

nimbius• 1 year ago

This is a problem the USA caused, and could easily solve, by dissolving the armistice and declaring an end to the Korean war.

only seven countries are currently participating in the embargo and sanction of North Korea, (at the behest of the united states.)

casenmgreen• 1 year ago

North Korea would never, in a million billion years, either accept peace, or actually honour it. NK is a hideously oppressive, violent, dictatorship, which would invade SK in a microsecond if it thought it could get away with it.

I think it astounding - staggering - to point the finger here at USA.

If you were not a long term, serious poster, I would think you were a fake account.

WhyNotHugo• 1 year ago

They convinced Ukraine to give up their nukes, promising that they'd be safe. I don't think there's any chance of convincing North Korea to follow the same path.

daedrdev• 1 year ago

No, one side declaring the end to a war does not end that war, this is one of the worst foreign policy takes I've ever heard. The NK regime is secure because of the war, they will poison pill any negotiation by demanding South Korea become part of the north.

croemer• 1 year ago

They cite LinkedIn profiles with 25 connections as easy tell tale signs. Well, I've got news for you: hacked LinkedIn profiles. Happened to a colleague of mine. Profile with more than a thousand genuine, reputable connections got hacked. Picture and name got changed to something East Asian sounding/looking. CV got changed to US defense contracting. Luckily this tripped some automatic account lockdown otherwise it might have well gone undiscovered for a while. Few people will remember every single LinkedIn connection, there's no notification of name change in messages etc. Quite likely this profile was sold to North Korean fake IT workers.

9cb14c1ec0• 1 year ago

Also, many people like me don't even have LinkedIn profiles. The "pick up your work computer in person" idea sounds like a much more reliable method to me.

abrookewood• 1 year ago

But it is so late in the process to catch them - hours wasted by so many people.

Roark663• 1 year ago

Yeah, pick up your computer in person will not work if you live 2d travel away. If my remote job told me to pick up the computer in person after 8h of interviews and tests I'd be seriously pissed off. If they advertised it in the beginning I'd not have applied.

In my country (Poland) courier companies offer this service of "id checking and contract signing". You can have a courier deliver a contract, check the recipient's photo ID and confirm their identity, have the person sign the contract, return it and the courier takes it back.

If there is no such service available there is only one way to prevent this from happening, proper screening of candidates. In my 20+ years of working for Fortune 500 companies in positions not far from the top only 1 - a Japanese one actually screened my educational background and called my references and past employers to verify.

If employees worry they will loose some really good candidates that have no documentable background ask them to do some other security check. Do a video call from the main street of their home town. Or some other thing randomly selected from a set of 5. If the role is really important hire someone to visit the remote worker in their home and deliver that laptop in person. But don't expect them to travel to pick it up.

red_admiral3• 1 year ago

I'm guessing many people working in security don't have LinkedIn profiles. It's not like you want to advertise a stint in Fort Meade, and then a list of people someone might contact to get access to you, or pull some social engineering. Or advertise your TS/SCI in your profile.

There's more and more places where the less visible presence online you have, the more you're a good fit for the position.

dmurray• 1 year ago

Surely North Korea could arrange people to do this, too. They already have people on the ground in the US e.g. to open bank accounts, and they only need this for candidates that actually get the job, not every interview.

You might say the people who interviewed the candidate should be there when he picks up his laptop. But this is already an extremely remote-friendly company, the interviewers might never be in the office. He's going to pick it up from the IT department in the basement and at best they will take a photograph of his face.

stuaxo• 1 year ago

Feel like at least one coworker might be better if they were this.

tehjoker• 1 year ago

The LinkedIn thing is very weird, what about all the guys that worked for another company for a long time and didn't bother with LinkedIn? I don't buy that, but the trend of these guys not showing up in-person at all is very suspicious, though not impossible. There are all kinds of reasons people want to do remote work, and some of those reasons might preclude an in-person meeting (like you might find out about a disability).

Still, I agree that's pretty suspicious. However, they didn't offer any proof whatsoever these guys are from North Korea or any motivation for why they would be doing this from North Korea. So, that sounds like potential U.S. propaganda.

They said they worked with the FBI, which honestly is a red flag for that kind of thing. Rather, if a company states without proof they're from NK, it's very likely BS. If the feds say it's North Korea without proof, it's definitely BS (they have resources to prove it!). If the Feds say it and provide proof, then we can talk about the proof.

peterdemin• 1 year ago

I hate how this is acceptable to make such claims about another country without providing any evidence. Same goes for Chinese or Russian hackers. It’s just whoever the US government is unhappy about.

some_random• 1 year ago

What evidence is lacking here?

energy123• 1 year ago

  > It’s just whoever the US government is unhappy about.

Likewise, you don't have evidence for this.

esafak3• 1 year ago

I've interviewed these people. They really exist! I did not know they were North Korean, but it would not surprise me.

defrost• 1 year ago

There's evidence, large investigations, and arrests aplenty already.

Justice Department Announces Coordinated, Nationwide Actions to Combat North Korean Remote Information Technology Workers’ Illicit Revenue Generation Schemes (justice.gov)

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-...

(12 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44431853

  Law Enforcement Actions Across 16 States Result in Charges, Arrest, and Seizures of 29 Financial Accounts, 21 Fraudulent Websites, and Approximately 200 Computers

  Today, the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts and the National Security Division announced the arrest of U.S. national Zhenxing “Danny” Wang of New Jersey pursuant to a five-count indictment. The indictment describes a multi-year fraud scheme by Wang and his co-conspirators to obtain remote IT work with U.S. companies that generated more than $5 million in revenue.

miffy9002• 1 year ago

The article itself is evidence. There are many more links in it to other stories that report on basically the same or similar incidents. There are also several names in the article itself that you can research or probe on your own to tell if it's coming from a trustworthy source.

Consider also the author: it's written by an actual journalist/editor with a large body of pre-existing work in the field, and many of the claims written are backed up by quotes from a named source. It's not like they're writing all this and hiding it behind the weasel phrase 'according to a source close to the matter'.

The register too is actually UK founded, so it's not even American.

Your reaction is just so typical of people nowadays - just assume it's all 'made up' without any effort in debunking or picking apart any specific claims.

deathanatos5• 1 year ago

Maybe this is a real problem, IDK. But this article is so scant on actual details, and is mostly just weasel-wording it's way to "it's a problem, trust us."

Chief among these disconnects were "shallow" LinkedIn profiles paired with "beefy resumes," she explained, citing job-seeker claims of working at Meta, attending Ivy League schools, developing major tech companies' flagship products … but then only having 25 LinkedIn connections.

LinkedIn is not the end-all be-all of résumés, and my coworkers have wildly varying numbers of connections.

"We've certainly seen applicants that fit into this category with various IOCs [indicators of compromise] that we've shared with partners and peers," Snowflake CISO Brad Jones told The Register.

This is an abuse of the technical term IoC to try and dress up what amounts to "my gut hunch".

Once the recruitment team began meeting via video conferences with some of the applicants, they noted extremely Western-sounding names, like James Anderson, paired with East Asian appearances and accented English, in much higher numbers than they expected.

That's just discriminatory.

"You can't profile people, […] *But*

sigh

The fraudster's answers weren't word-for-word ChatGPT, Little noted. "These people are smart, they're not unskilled, they're sophisticated," she said.

… no, that's because that's not how LLMs work.

routing everything through a VPN

I'm not even sure how you would know this about a candidate.

These IOCs, or indicators of compromise, include email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers that have been flagged as associated with non-legitimate candidates.

This is begging the question: the candidate is suss because they're suss. What makes the email address et al. "flagged"?

The final step is always an in-person interview.

I mean … if you're not doing that, then … okay, I see how the scammers got to you.

"We require people to come to the office to pick up their computer," Robinson said as an example.

I mean, if you pay for the plane tickets, the hotels, the taxis, the meals, and the time, sure, I guess.

If this is truly a problem — and maybe it is — the Register's reporting is so unspecific that it leaves us with no details of how we might tell, what to look out for (in ways that doesn't run afoul of racial discrimination, or seen elsewhere in the comments, political discrimination). It leaves me thinking this is an ad designed to leave me going "I'd have to hire a company that specializes in this to know if I'm being affected by it."

resheku• 1 year ago

I keep hearing about this and honestly I don’t get it how does this continue to happen? Here I am, a real human, decent person and a nice guy lol yet I can’t find a good job. What are these companies doing, how is this possible?

Aurornis7• 1 year ago

They aren’t telling the truth when they apply. They’ll use stolen identities, fabricated backgrounds, fake reference checks, hacked LinkedIn profiles.

They are professionals at lying and interviewing. When it’s your job to get jobs and you’re doing it with organized support, you will find something.

They also don’t really care if the job is good or bad. They’re just farming any and all jobs they can get and hanging on to them until they’re pushed out. At many companies, that can take years.

edm0nd• 1 year ago

The Norks basically just steal a very qualified persons identity and info and then use that info to apply for jobs. So on paper, the job applicant looks pretty good but its just all larping from the threat actors. For being such a hermit kingdom, they are very good at infiltrating large companies and stealing cryptocurrencies.

danielhep• 1 year ago

What’s the end game for these scammers once they get the job? I understand there’s a question of espionage if they’re collecting intel from these companies, but do they also do their jobs? Or do they disappear as soon as they’re hired and collect as much data and money until they get fired? Do they actually know how to do IT work?

Aurornis7• 1 year ago

The article mentions ransoming company data or source code as one outcome.

For many scammers (not North Korean specifically) it’s just one big game of collecting as many paychecks from as many companies as you can until they fire you.

For some multi-job people, the game is to continuously apply to companies and then let any company that is paying attention fire them after 1-3 months. Repeat long enough and you might find your way into a couple companies where your demands are so low that you can do all the jobs in a couple hours per day because your managers are so checked out that they don’t care. Ride this until the company lays off the whole underperforming team, then find the next jobs.

gkanai• 1 year ago

An required in-person verification due diligence step would stop this, no?

ErigmolCt• 1 year ago

What's clear is that this isn't just a security problem

mathverse2• 1 year ago

This is entirely US's companies fault for not favorizing people from 1st world countries. At this point it's not a question of $ but not really giving a shit.

If you have 2 candidates and one is from lets say Czech Republic and the other one from 3rd world then it's fully on you for getting screwed over.

akazantsev• 1 year ago

Could have read the article. All involved companies hired US-based workers who received company-provided laptops and set up remote access on them for North Koreans.

pllbnk2• 1 year ago

I would really like to see one of these deepfake videos that managed to trick any competent interviewer into thinking it was real. I couldn't find anything like that on Youtube. Even in highly controlled environments the deepfake videos can be immediately recognized.

frontfor• 1 year ago

Here’s one example, although I don’t know if this is a North Korean.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7292604...

anarticle• 1 year ago

I've definitely gotten something similar to this in dev slacks offering to use my upwork/linkedin to get a job and then I hand it off to someone else. They claim they'll pay 30-50k/y.

Sounds like my IRL value just keeps going up.

The North Korean fake IT worker problem is ubiquitous

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