Comment by abxyz

Comment by abxyz 20 hours ago

11 replies

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

spydum 18 hours 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 17 hours 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 11 hours ago

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

le-mark 19 hours ago

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

NitpickLawyer 19 hours 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 18 hours ago

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

    • ChrisMarshallNY 17 hours ago

      I have a feeling there may be a Nork "flash mob" going on, like when someone says bad stuff about Musk.