Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
IT

How A Simple Question Tripped Up a North Korean Spy Interviewing for an IT Job (yahoo.com) 47

Posted by EditorDavid from the killing-a-job dept.
Long-time Slashdot reader smooth wombat writes: Over the past year there have been stories about North Korean spies unknowingly or knowingly being hired to work in western companies. During an interview by Kraken, a crypto exchange, the interviewers became suspicious about the candidate. Instead of cutting off the interview, Kraken decided to continue the candidate through the hiring process to gain more information. One simple question confirmed the user wasn't who they said they were and even worse, was a North Korean spy.
Would-be IT worker "Steven Smith" already had an email address on a "do-not-hire" list from law enforcement agencies, according to CBS News. And an article in Fortune magazine says Kraken asked him to speak to a recruiter and take a technical-pretest, and "I don't think he actually answered any questions that we asked him," according to its chief security officer Nick Percoco — even though the application was claiming 11 years of experience as a software engineer at U.S.-based companies: The interview was scheduled for Halloween, a classic American holiday—especially for college students in New York—that Smith seemed to know nothing about. "Watch out tonight because some people might be ringing your doorbell, kids with chain saws," Percoco said, referring to the tradition of trick or treating. "What do you do when those people show up?"

Smith shrugged and shook his head. "Nothing special," he said.

Smith was also unable to answer simple questions about Houston, the town he had supposedly been living in for two years. Despite having listed "food" as an interest on his résumé, Smith was unable to come up with a straight answer when asked about his favorite restaurant in the Houston area. He looked around for a few seconds before mumbling, "Nothing special here...."

The United Nations estimates that North Korea has generated between $250 million to $600 million per year by tricking overseas firms to hire its spies. A network of North Koreans, known as Famous Chollima, was behind 304 individual incidents last year, cybersecurity company CrowdStrike reported, predicting that the campaigns will continue to grow in 2025.
During a report CBS News actually aired footage of the job interview with the "suspected member of Kim Jong Un's cyberarmy." "Some people might call it trolling as well," one company official told the news outlet. "We call it security research." (And they raise the disturbing possibility that another IT company might very well have hired "Steven Smith"...)

CBS also spoke to CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch, who says the problem increased with remote work, as is now fueling a state-run weapons program. "It's a huge problem because these people are not just North Koreans — they're North Koreans working for their munitions industry department, they're working for the Korean People's Army." (He says later the results of their work are "going directly" to North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.)

And when CBS notes that the FBI issued a wanted poster of alleged North Korean agents and arrested Americans hosting laptop farms in Arizona and Tennesse ("computer hubs inside the U.S. that conceal the cybercriminals real identities"), Alperovitch says "They cannot do this fraud without support here in America from witting or unwitting actors. So they have hired probably hundreds of people..." CBS adds that FBI officials say "the IT worker scene is expanding worldwide."

How A Simple Question Tripped Up a North Korean Spy Interviewing for an IT Job More | Reply

How A Simple Question Tripped Up a North Korean Spy Interviewing for an IT Job

Comments Filter:

  • Buddy of mine just had his work (Score:5, Informative)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday May 10, 2025 @01:56PM (#65366905)
    Do background checks on everyone. It was stealth layoffs. It was easy enough to find people who would have a DUI or smoked a little weed or something and use that as an excuse to fire somebody with cause.

    The point is companies can easily find out absolutely everything about you. That same buddy once got a bit of junk mail from one of the Indian h1-bs that used to live in their apartment before them and they were asked if they had a relationship. To this day neither me or my buddy know how the hell the company in question found out about a random piece of mail from the prior occupant of their apartment. Although fun fact the company you work for can find out what mail you're getting.

    What I'm saying is if you're a company and you're hiring somebody from North Korea you know damn well what you're doing and you're doing it on purpose because they are *cheap*.

    Of course when you get caught you're going to play the victim because what you've done is extraordinarily illegal.

    When it comes to money and saving on hiring Americans there is no deaphs to which a business will not stoop. The only reason they're not currently harvesting your organs is we aren't far enough along for them to do that. Give it another presidential election or two and we'll have those mobile organ harvesting vehicles just like China
    • In what region of China are the best diapason grown? The harvesting vehicles would need at least an 8 foot bed.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by drnb ( 2434720 )

      Do background checks on everyone. It was stealth layoffs. It was easy enough to find people who would have a DUI or smoked a little weed or something and use that as an excuse to fire somebody with cause.

      So, finding someone lied on an application or during an interview is an "excuse"? We're not talking about exaggerations like "yes, I've used python" when your experience can be measured in hours not months. We're talking about "have you ever been arrested"?

    • That same buddy once got a bit of junk mail from one of the Indian h1-bs that used to live in their apartment before them and they were asked if they had a relationship. To this day neither me or my buddy know how the hell the company in question found out about a random piece of mail from the prior occupant of their apartment.

      It's _far_ more likely two different names popped up when they queried something like LexisNexis for your bud's address. They aggregate publicly available information, and it's just real easy to do... is this a real address and who lives there. Banks use those checks, lots of business do.

      vs having a PI go through their trash for an extended period, that's very unlikely if they weren't being sued.

      • I gather it was a very specific name. Indian people have these ridiculously complex and long names. And I gather from my buddy that they were aware he had received mail for that person.

        Come to think of it though they probably knew the mail had been sent because it was probably run of the mail junk mail and that information gets sold like anything else and they also would have known the previous people that lived in the apartment because again, like everything else it gets sold.

        It's just creepy as fu

        • Come to think of it though they probably knew the mail had been sent because it was probably run of the mail junk mail and that information gets sold like anything elseâ¦

          Bingo. Yeah, background checks literally just search credit files/lexisNexis which in turn are just collections of cheap available lists.

          Next most likely option, the h1b applied for a credit card using that address or gave it to their employer for payrole who then turned around and rented it out to ADT or anyone with two nickels to rub together that asked

    • Every address has lists of people associated with it, whether they currently live there or have ever lived there or are related to people who have or do live there.

      It is used all the time in business like banking, insurance, background checks. My former auto insurance company got very concerned after I moved from a house into an apartment building. They could see in their data that a lot of people with driving issues also had the same address, past or present. None of them had anything to do with me, of

  • To be fair, you could have asked me about my favorite restaurant in Boston for the past twenty years and you'd have had no idea what I was talking about because it's always been a series of no-name Mom-and-Pop neighborhood pizza shops out in the burbs.

    And Halloween wasn't really a thing until I had kids of my own.

    Perhaps there was another tell here they aren't putting above the fold.

    • it's always been a series of no-name Mom-and-Pop neighborhood pizza shops

      That's a better answer than "nothing special"

      • Idunno dude. In an industry where an extrovert is a man who looks at your shoes instead of his own, "nothing special" isn't that out of the ordinary.

        In fact, that's my go-to answer for most idle smalltalk at the office.

        "Got any plans for the weekend?"

        "Nothing special."

        -or alternatively-

        "Well, on Saturday I'm taking Kid 1 to Activity 1, trying to keep Kid 2 off the screens, cooking for the week the same fucking set of dishes I cook every week. Cutting the grass. Patching up a crack in my drywall. Continuing

  • His ignorance of Halloween has pretty much become fact in a lot of places. The last couple of years, we haven't seen a single kid trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. It seems like the ritual of going door-to-door requesting candy has been replaced with Halloween parties, something called "trunk-or-treat", and I suppose some parents just buying their kids a big ol' bag of Reese's and just telling 'em it's not safe to go out because Fox News claimed they'll be poisoned or groomed.

    • Re: (Score:1, Redundant)

      by ihavesaxwithcollies ( 10441708 )

      just telling 'em it's not safe to go out because Fox News claimed they'll be poisoned or groomed.

      I know you're kidding, but you'd be shocked at the number of orange rubes that believe fox news's word as the gospel.

      RFK jr. is a self-admitted heroin addict, “I was a heroin addict for 14 years. I’ve been 42 years in recovery,” said Kennedy. It's perfectly ok with them as he is white and a trump-lover.

      I'm fairly confident RFK jr. could rob them at gunpoint, for heroin money, and it'd be all right with them.

      • I know you're kidding

        It (Fox/right-wing media) may not be the entire reason, but something certainly has been contributing to the modern mentality that letting your kids go out unsupervised is unsafe. I may not be a sociologist, but I've stayed at a Holiday Inn a few times and ChatGPT tends to concur:

        Changing Parenting Norms: There’s been a cultural shift toward more supervised and structured activities, with many parents being less comfortable letting their kids roam the neighborhood, even just for candy.

        Right-wing medi

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Yeah, despite crime rates far below what they were when the parents were kids they've all been terrified by major news organizations into thinking kids playing outside is a terrible idea.

      In other news, youth obesity rates continue to climb!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kackle ( 910159 )
        Violent crime is down. I can't get a clear picture about other crimes though: Some places say they're down, but others say porch piracy and car-jackings (which are done to commit more crimes) have exploded. And as I've said before, people weren't trying to scam seniors from halfway around the world, decades ago, the way successfully do now; are these considered, too?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          So kids should be kept indoors so they arent porch pirated, car jacked, or conned out of their retirement savings?

          Not that I'm buying into your unsubstantiated claims mind you. When I look at things like this https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com] and this https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/fi... [ojp.gov] I feel pretty certain kids are going to be alright playing outdoors nowadays.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kackle ( 910159 )
            Kids? I didn't say anything about kids being outside. I was just saying the crime stats are dubious.

            That said, there were two abduction attempts made against children in my extended family in two separate suburbs, two decades apart. Good times.
    • I moved from Southern California to a small city in the southwest back in the summer of '18, and I haven't seen any trick or treaters since. That's because out here, Halloween is held in the late afternoon after school's out. And, it all happens in the local business district with groups of kids going up and down the streets getting candy from shopkeepers, artisans and other small professionals. And this is in a city that used to be known as the "Sex Change Capital of the World."

  • Better question (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday May 10, 2025 @02:17PM (#65366951)

    How fat is Kim Jong Un? [theregister.com]

    • I once had an Indian scam call, and asked the caller how the weather was in India. He replied that he was "... in New York sir." So I told him I was from New York too and then asked what time it was in New York (I live the same time zone). There was a pause of silence lasting about 5 seconds before he hung up.

      I assume he was frantically trying to search for the correct time in New York before giving up.

  • Apparently an interviewer got suspicious and asked. The guy on the other line immediately hung up, not wanting to answer that question on-the-record.

  • ... is the hiring of people with fucking pathetic skills. Now the question is did this spy try to emulate a clueless uneducated US citizen with an inflated ego and a padded CV, or was he really incompetent. Because the second does not sound like professional spycraft to me at all, but the first one would just be an attempt to fit in.

    Incidentally, I do not think anybody noticed anything except his email being on that list....

  • For me, the news in this story is (Score:5, Informative)

    by newbie_fantod ( 514871 ) on Saturday May 10, 2025 @03:50PM (#65367159)

    ... that law enforcement maintains a "Do Not Hire" list

    • Yeah, you tend to not hire people that have already been arrested or put in jail prior to becoming a police officer. That should be no surprise there is a "Do Not Hire" list.

  • ...and they're certainly foreign. This doesn't prove they're actually North Korean, nor a spy. There's all sorts of fake job cartels, and individual actors, extracting money out of larger companies through salary. They're often based out of India, China, South America, etc. This doesn't have to be a Clancy novel.

  • Is this the same Steve Smith that DOGE hired as data security engineer at Social Security?

  • a really bad spy (Score:3)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Sunday May 11, 2025 @12:10AM (#65367895)
    Any half decent spy will have a solid background that is well researched and rehearsed. They probably send in dodgy ones like him to make us think we are catching them all.

Slashdot Top Deals

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

Close