Comment by conradev
Comment by conradev a day ago
I can’t find the tweet but apparently you can also filter these folks out by asking them to criticize Kim Jong Un
Comment by conradev a day ago
I can’t find the tweet but apparently you can also filter these folks out by asking them to criticize Kim Jong Un
That’s why it’s important to remember that not all state-level attacks are created equal. Intelligence agencies can create fake personas at varying levels of cost and realism, but if North Korea is doing that for revenue they’re not going to spend the same kind of resources they would trying to get, say, nuclear weapons data.
The situation here is significantly asymmetric: the attacker has to do a lot of work to build a realistic persona but the defense can make that much harder with a few basic checks. It’s been cost-effective in the past because companies were skimping on their hiring and internal security, similar to how the identity theft crisis was mostly a crisis in companies doing due diligence.
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.
I think I would encourage companies that are experiencing problems with unwittingly hiring fake employees (North Korean or otherwise) to ask such bizarre questions. Or they could just flat out state that they have been having such problems and will therefore be implementing schemes to detect fake employees.
I would very much appreciate that. I think it would be grand if they could even put that in the job posting right up front. It would help me cross that company off the list of places I would be willing to work. I personally don't want to work at a place that cannot tell whether I am real or fake.
If a company asked me anything about the leader of North Korea during an interview for a tech job, I would conclude that they were not a serious company.
What I think about any country leader is totally irrelevant to tech work. So the company is either 1. Wasting my time with a totally irrelevant question or 2. Their hiring process is so vulnerable, they can’t even tell if a candidate is fake. Neither of those would make me particularly excited about that company.
It was 2 min of hate ;) and this clearly isn't the same as trying to rile people up; it's a thin attempt to get people to self report if they are lying with some sort of higher level "gotcha".
Feels like the story about disconnecting Chinese gamers from matches automatically by typing "tiananmen square" or the story of the Battle of Siffin with one side putting pages of the quoran on their spears in hopes the enemy wouldn't fight that way. Unclear how accurate the stories are or how effective it may have been but kind of interesting at least.
Honestly, sounds like a red flag if even a legitimate applicant is unwilling to voice an opinion on the Kim regime.
Please do not foster this concept that I have a responsibility to proactively criticize ever fascist regime of the past century in order to dispel implicit notions that I am "supporting" them in vague undefined ways.
I would find that question extremely weird in a job interview for a normal job, and I have no problem saying that the Kim regime is one of the most horrible regimes ever.
I don't consider myself to know enough to criticize.
Of course what little I do know is all negative. But I've paid only limited attention, and I get nothing from primary sources.
I expect the same from practically everyone -- perhaps excepting South Koreans who at least speak the language. I'd consider it good judgment to say that you just can't meaningfully answer the question.
I'd read a statement you hand me, if you thought that would suffice. But I'll admit I'd consider that weird and likely useless.
100%
It's not a false positive. It's a true positive
If the person is so obnoxious as to not be able to give such a silly statement, imagine how they would be fun in your team
Replace North Korean leader with Biden and Trump, how that sounds?
I would never allow any potential client ask me ANY political questions. Not because I like any political figure but because I am trying not to encourage fucking thought control. I hope we are not on Nazi Germany yet. It is just simply not their fucking business. On the other hand if they offer me a million in cold hard cash just for that I would tell then anything they want to hear.
> I would never…
> … if they offer me a million…
This is exactly like that famous joke! :D “Mam I believe we’ve already established that. At this point, we’re just negotiating.”
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)
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.
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.