Seems like this should be much, much bigger news.
Wow.
And yeah, it's real.
North Korean IT workers are posing as Americans to score coveted remote jobs and use the salaries to pay for their country's missile program.
Why it matters: Remote hiring practices have made it dangerously easy for North Korean IT workers to dupe hiring managers who historically had relied on in-person interviews to detect imposters.
- These issues could be exacerbated as AI technologies get better at creating more realistic deepfake video and audio.
Driving the news: Federal prosecutors charged an Arizona woman and four other people last week with facilitating an elaborate North Korea-linked scheme to help their IT workers pose as U.S. citizens and secure remote tech jobs.
- Workers landed jobs at more than 300 U.S. companies — including an aerospace manufacturer, U.S. automaker, a Silicon Valley tech company and other Fortune 500 companies — as part of this specific scam.
- North Koreans used the identities of more than 60 U.S. people in their job applications and relied on VPNs to disguise their computers' actual location. The workers are linked to the regime's Munitions Industry Department, which oversees its ballistic missiles and weapons production programs, according to the State Department.
- In total, this specific scheme generated at least $6.8 million in revenue.
This is fine. Totally fine.
Yep.
They have their priorities.
It's embarrassing.
Well done, y'all.
Excellent questions.
And we leave the border open to let them come here unfettered.
If true, it's insane.
Oh, wouldn't that be ironic.