Undercover North Korean Remote Workers Hate This One Weird Question

There are allegedly thousands of North Koreans who person successfully disguised themselves arsenic Americans and landed distant enactment jobs astatine Fortune 500 businesses and crypto firms. And portion their techniques for getting successful are sophisticated, catching them seemingly conscionable requires asking 1 kinda crude question: “How abdominous is Kim Jong Un?”

According to Adam Meyers, the Senior Vice President of Counter Adversary Operations astatine cybersecurity steadfast CrowdStrike, asking that question during the interrogation process stops the North Korean workers successful their tracks. While speaking astatine the RSA Conference earlier this week, Meyers explained that asking a question similar that volition origin the prospective idiosyncratic to abort. “They terminate the telephone instantly, due to the fact that it’s not worthy it to accidental thing antagonistic astir that,” helium said, according to a report from The Register.

Meyers said determination are different giveaways, too, if you cognize what to look for. “One of the things that we’ve noted is that you’ll person a idiosyncratic successful Poland applying with a precise analyzable name, and past erstwhile you get them connected Zoom calls, it’s a subject property antheral Asian who can’t pronounce it,” helium said.

The “neg” Kim Jong Un attack is not a Meyers original. Earlier this month, Fortune spoke to Harrison Leggio, the laminitis of a cryptocurrency startup called g8keep, who said his institution has been flooded with applications from North Korean citizens posing arsenic prospective IT workers astir the globe. To weed them out, helium told Fortune helium ends interviews by asking candidates, “Say thing antagonistic astir Kim Jong Un.” Leggio claims different founders helium knows are asking the aforesaid happening to thwart the infiltration attempts.

Now, is this really true? Probably immoderate mentation of it is, right? It conscionable sounds truthful outlandishly cartoonish. According to Meyers, these infiltration efforts usually impact creating somewhat elaborate backstories and fake societal media profiles for a candidate, past utilizing a squad of radical who enactment connected method problems during the interrogation process portion 1 idiosyncratic serves arsenic a beforehand person. And they conscionable propulsion that each retired astatine the imaginable of saying 1 atrocious happening astir their leader? They aren’t fixed the go-ahead to propulsion a Captain America saying “Heil Hydra” benignant move?

With specified a elemental method to halt a imaginable North Korean phony, you’d deliberation that the occurrence complaint would beryllium debased for them getting in. And possibly it is, but they are inactive reportedly funneling millions of dollars backmost to the North Korean government, according to the FBI. The UN estimated North Korean IT idiosyncratic scams person generated $250 cardinal to $600 cardinal each twelvemonth since 2018, with the workers keeping conscionable a sliver of what they earn.

Part of the crushed is that erstwhile they unafraid those jobs, they thin to execute good successful them. The Register reported that FBI Special Agent Elizabeth Pelker, a panelist astatine the aforesaid RSA Conference lawsuit arsenic Meyers, said it’s communal for businesses to inquire if they truly person to occurrence the worker erstwhile they’re discovered to beryllium a North Korean citizen, due to the fact that they are reliable workers.

Now, conscionable ideate however overmuch they’ll beryllium capable to propulsion successful if they’re allowed to accidental 1 mean happening astir Kim Jong Un.