A North Korean national has been exposed after attempting to gain employment with an Australian business during a remote job interview.
According to security and behavioural intelligence firm DTEX, the individual was seeking to funnel their wages to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to fund the country’s weapons programs, which are limited by global sanction regimes.
DTEX said that, for Australian enterprises, the insider risk is real and a direct threat to national supply chains and the nation’s security.
“These are not ordinary job applicants,” Mohan Koo, president and co-founder of DTEX, said in a statement.
“This is a state-linked operation designed to get people inside real businesses, generate money for the regime and create opportunities for further compromise. Australian organisations need to treat this as both an insider threat and a national security issue.”
DTEX believes that fake workers linked to the DPRK are bringing in as much as $864 million in ill-got funds globally each year, and the schemes themselves are becoming harder to detect. AI is making fake résumés easier to create and harder to detect, deepfake voice and image technology is hiding identities, and third parties are being employed to help create more complete fake identities.
“Australian organisations need expert capability to catch risk early, especially in the growing space between human and AI-enabled activity,” Koo said.
“Better identity verification, stronger screening and awareness of known indicators can help stop these operatives before they are hired. But if they get in, employers need to detect unusual behaviour quickly and respond before access is used to steal data, misuse systems or compromise the wider supply chain.”
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David Hollingworth
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.