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How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

theregister.com

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Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#91

Post by alephnerd »

wizerdrobe wrote: post #35
BossingAround wrote: post #12

> Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests Why would they evade drug tests and meeting in person? Do the "techies" claim they are not Korean at all? Surely, a North Korean would pass as a South Korean to (at least) any non-Korean colleague?

Pure speculation, but there is a large North Korean methamphetamine trade. Allegedly, per escapees, many North Koreans use meth for purposes of work enhancing stimulants and hunger suppression. Perhaps these slaves are being doped up to focus on the work?

> large North Korean methamphetamine trade

It's common all among the working class in Asia and the Asian Diaspora (Bayswater Basic if you've ever been to London). It's dirt cheap and keeps you awake while. doing any monotonous or manual labor.

In this specific case, a drug test for a remote job requires ID verification. It's a simple redundancy to verify that the person you hired is that same person.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#92

Post by ornornor »

etimberg wrote: post #73
ornornor wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first “real” job demanded a background check where they could “interview my neighbors to get a sense of my character” and other egregious things. I tried many times to get in touch with the background check provider’s (backcheck in Canada) privacy team, never ever got to a human or anyone to return my voicemails. The employer was completely incredulous I would refuse to submit to the background check and thought I…

What kind of job was this for? because interviewing neighbours is something that sounds like part of a top secret clearance not a private company background check

They probably don’t do it but it was in the paperwork I had to sign to authorize the background check and it felt way too intrusive for just a regular job, which is why I always refused to sign it.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#93

Post by lolc »

kube-system wrote: post #42
lolc wrote: post #40

> Threats to release proprietary source codes if additional payments are not made; This is "a sign"? In what company is that not grounds for immediate revocation of all access, termination?

It is both.

To me it was weird in a list of things "to look out for". When somebody makes those threats, the jig is up. But of course, retrospectively, it may help to classify. So yea, I get now why it's on the list.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#94

Post by RecycledEle »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #90

This reads like blatant fear mongering > infiltrate organizations they work for to steal secrets Do you worry about this as a random company? You are gonna steal source code for 4 out of 12 micro services required to run some random online shopping website, or a video game? what is North Korean gov. Going to do with it? And if you give random people access to customer data, then it’s already being sold on the dark we…

Q: What will they do with it?

A: Insert code for backdoors, then leverage those backdoors to hack defense systems and systems that can track where defense personnel and equipment are. Traffic cameras and delivery services come to mind.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#95

Post by gumby »

hotnfresh wrote: post #57
gumby wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do a drug test on a remote worker? And why? If they can’t do the job you fire them.

Government contractors. It’s a legal requirement. They schedule you at a local-to-you testing center. They’re everywhere, because truck drivers and some other jobs are legally required to test. It’s very dumb. Scheduled-in-advance piss tests aren’t great for catching much other than weed. Most other things aren’t detected in urine after 2-3 days. Weed metabolites, which is what they test for, stick around for potenti…

> Government contractors. It’s a legal requirement.

Probably things have changed, but back in the mid 90s we had our first government contract, and one thing was that we were required to have a "drug testing policy".

A couple of team suggestions were "you bring 'em we'll test 'em" and "employees have access to private ceramic urine collection devices. After collection, other employees do not have access to the results of processing".

In the end we sent in "Our policy is not to test for drugs" and we got our contract.

(I agree with you that what matters is actual functional risk, not paranoia)

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#96

Post by klyrs »

vkou wrote: post #76
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High security jobs. Jobs in finance. Anything involving driving or operating machinery. Maybe customer-facing jobs. Basically anywhere where, if you're stoned, you could cause damage to the company.

> Basically anywhere where, if you're stoned, you could cause damage to the company . Does the C-suite also get regular, supervised piss-in-a-cup tests, or do they actually not have as much impact on the success of the firm as they claim to?

No, but they only do performance-enhancing coke, so no worries there.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#97

Post by kube-system »

wizerdrobe wrote: post #35
BossingAround wrote: post #12

> Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests Why would they evade drug tests and meeting in person? Do the "techies" claim they are not Korean at all? Surely, a North Korean would pass as a South Korean to (at least) any non-Korean colleague?

Pure speculation, but there is a large North Korean methamphetamine trade. Allegedly, per escapees, many North Koreans use meth for purposes of work enhancing stimulants and hunger suppression. Perhaps these slaves are being doped up to focus on the work?

Even if they aren't on drugs, they can't physically show up to the test, because they are lying about their location, and they're trapped in a different country.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#98

Post by drivers99 »

Run_DOS_Run wrote: post #66

>Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests. I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US? Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. If I got a request for a drug test, I would quit immediately. Even if I am sure it is negative, my private life is my business. Any attempt to contro…

When I started each of my last 2 jobs, I had to take a drug test. They are both US Fortune 500 companies. They are just normal computer operations type jobs.

The previous company won their case in Colorado Supreme Court to fire someone using medical marijuana even while off-duty.[0]

Additionally, even though we passed a law (constitutional amendment) allowing recreational use in Colorado, employers are still allowed to test and fire you for it.

[0] https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/colorado-...

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#99

Post by kube-system »

vkou wrote: post #76
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High security jobs. Jobs in finance. Anything involving driving or operating machinery. Maybe customer-facing jobs. Basically anywhere where, if you're stoned, you could cause damage to the company.

> Basically anywhere where, if you're stoned, you could cause damage to the company . Does the C-suite also get regular, supervised piss-in-a-cup tests, or do they actually not have as much impact on the success of the firm as they claim to?

Depending on the legal environment, maybe. But it's not as if c-suite positions have zero job screening. They have a different screening process which includes other things that lower level positions don't have to do.

Re: How not to hire a North Korean plant posing as a techie

#100

Post by eep_social »

maximinus_thrax wrote: post #80
Run_DOS_Run wrote: post #66

>Evading in-person meetings or requests for drug tests. I am surprised about the request for drug tests. Is this common in the US? Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. If I got a request for a drug test, I would quit immediately. Even if I am sure it is negative, my private life is my business. Any attempt to contro…

> Except for high-security jobs, which are never possible remotely anyway, I have never heard of a client or employer asking for a drug test. Some companies have contracts with the Federal Government and even if you won't be working on those projects or won't have to get the security clearance, there are certain clauses in the contracts which requires the company to not have employees drink at work, to drug test empl…

I heard a (likely apocryphal) story that selling govcloud service would require drug testing for employees that had any access at all to those systems. The story goes that the engineering leader laughed their sales counterpart making the proposal out of the room because they expected to lose approximately a third of their employee base to such nonsense. This was before marijuana legalization became so widespread, I assume some kind of reality has taken hold now such that the requirements are achievable by a tech population that, anecdotally, smokes a lot of weed off hours.
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