A North Korean hacker who tried to infiltrate the ranks of a US tech firm has been caught red-handed.
He had utilized for an engineering position on the Kraken cryptocurrency trade, which knew he was a malicious actor from the very begin.
However as a substitute of rejecting his CV, executives allowed him to advance via the recruitment course of so they may collect intelligence about his ways.
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The primary crimson flag emerged when the hacker joined a video name utilizing a unique identify to the one on his resume, along with his voice sometimes switching all through the interview.
Forensic examination of his ID confirmed that it appeared to have been altered – and should have featured particulars from victims of identification theft.
Traps had been additionally set within the remaining interview, when the hacker was requested to confirm their location and suggest good eating places within the metropolis they claimed to reside in.
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Kraken mentioned this precipitated the candidate to unravel – they usually had been unable to convincingly reply easy questions as a result of they had been flustered and caught off guard.
“By the end of the interview, the truth was clear: this was not a legitimate applicant, but an imposter attempting to infiltrate our systems,” the corporate added.
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Its chief safety officer Nick Percoco has warned state-sponsored assaults are a “global threat” – and whereas some hackers break in, others attempt to stroll via the entrance door.
Though synthetic intelligence is making it simpler to deceive companies, he does not consider this expertise is foolproof, as real-time verification exams can usually wrong-foot fraudsters.
Analysis from the Google Menace Intelligence Group suggests this can be a rising downside – with North Korean IT employees gaining employment at main firms within the US and Europe.
Their salaries assist generate income for the secretive state – and in some instances, malicious actors additionally extort their employers by threatening to launch commercially delicate data.
