A North Korean Hacker Tricked a US Safety Vendor Into Hiring Him—and Instantly Tried to Hack Them

KnowBe4, a US-based safety vendor, revealed that it unwittingly employed a North Korean hacker who tried to load malware into the corporate’s community. KnowBe4 CEO and founder Stu Sjouwerman described the incident in a blog post this week, calling it a cautionary story that was thankfully detected earlier than inflicting any main issues.

“Initially: No unlawful entry was gained, and no knowledge was misplaced, compromised, or exfiltrated on any KnowBe4 techniques,” Sjouwerman wrote. “This isn’t an information breach notification, there was none. See it as an organizational studying second I’m sharing with you. If it might probably occur to us, it might probably occur to virtually anybody. Do not let it occur to you.”

KnowBe4 stated it was in search of a software program engineer for its inner IT AI crew. The agency employed an individual who, it seems, was from North Korea and was “utilizing a legitimate however stolen US-based id” and a photograph that was “enhanced” by synthetic intelligence. There’s now an lively FBI investigation amid suspicion that the employee is what KnowBe4’s weblog put up known as “an Insider Menace/Nation State Actor.”

KnowBe4 operates in 11 international locations and is headquartered in Florida. It offers safety consciousness coaching, together with phishing safety assessments, to company prospects. For those who often obtain a fake phishing email out of your employer, you is perhaps working for an organization that makes use of the KnowBe4 service to check its workers’ capacity to identify scams.

Particular person Handed Background Examine and Video Interviews

KnowBe4 employed the North Korean hacker by way of its standard course of. “We posted the job, acquired résumés, carried out interviews, carried out background checks, verified references, and employed the individual. We despatched them their Mac workstation, and the second it was acquired, it instantly began to load malware,” the corporate stated.

Although the photograph supplied to HR was faux, the one who was interviewed for the job apparently appeared sufficient prefer it to go. KnowBe4’s HR crew “carried out 4 video convention based mostly interviews on separate events, confirming the person matched the photograph supplied on their software,” the put up stated. “Moreover, a background test and all different normal pre-hiring checks had been carried out and got here again clear as a result of stolen id getting used. This was an actual individual utilizing a legitimate however stolen US-based id. The image was AI ‘enhanced.'”

The 2 photographs on the high of this story are a inventory photograph and what KnowBe4 says is the AI faux based mostly on the inventory photograph. The inventory photograph is on the left, and the AI faux is on the proper.

The worker, known as “XXXX” within the weblog put up, was employed as a principal software program engineer. The brand new rent’s suspicious actions had been flagged by safety software program, main KnowBe4’s Safety Operations Heart (SOC) to research:

On July 15, 2024, a sequence of suspicious actions had been detected on the person starting at 9:55 pm EST. When these alerts got here in KnowBe4’s SOC crew reached out to the person to inquire in regards to the anomalous exercise and doable trigger. XXXX responded to SOC that he was following steps on his router information to troubleshoot a pace problem and that it might have induced a compromise.

The attacker carried out varied actions to govern session historical past recordsdata, switch probably dangerous recordsdata, and execute unauthorized software program. He used a Raspberry Pi to obtain the malware. SOC tried to get extra particulars from XXXX together with getting him on a name. XXXX said he was unavailable for a name and later turned unresponsive. At round 10:20 pm EST SOC contained XXXX’s system.

“Faux IT Employee From North Korea”

The SOC evaluation indicated that the loading of malware “might have been intentional by the person,” and the group “suspected he could also be an Insider Menace/Nation State Actor,” the weblog put up stated.

“We shared the collected knowledge with our associates at Mandiant, a number one international cybersecurity professional, and the FBI, to corroborate our preliminary findings. It seems this was a faux IT employee from North Korea,” Sjouwerman wrote.

KnowBe4 stated it might probably’t present a lot element due to the lively FBI investigation. However the individual employed for the job might have logged into the corporate pc remotely from North Korea, Sjouwerman defined:

How this works is that the faux employee asks to get their workstation despatched to an handle that’s mainly an “IT mule laptop computer farm.” They then VPN in from the place they actually bodily are (North Korea or over the border in China) and work the night time shift in order that they appear to be working in US daytime. The rip-off is that they’re truly doing the work, getting paid effectively, and provides a big quantity to North Korea to fund their unlawful applications. I haven’t got to let you know in regards to the extreme danger of this. It is good we’ve new workers in a extremely restricted space once they begin, and don’t have any entry to manufacturing techniques. Our controls caught it, however that was certain a studying second that I’m glad to share with everybody.

This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.