The following story sounds like an Apple TV+ spy series. And after the global collapse of CrowdStrike, it’s hard to believe that such things are happening in the world. Imagine a scenario with a Korean Spy, Hacks and Fake Photos Generated by AI. Although it seems fictional, this all happened in real life at a cybersecurity company in the United States called KnowBe4.
As soon as I was hired, they sent me a Mac as a work tool.
At KnowBe4, they needed a software engineer for their internal artificial intelligence team. Human resources posted the position, they received resumesSeveral people went through interview phases, asked for references, checked their backgrounds… All until finally finding the final candidate.
As soon as the worker received the Mac, I started installing malware on itin addition to having the help of a Raspberry Pi to manipulate the files. The employee performed various actions such as analyzing the session history, transfer potentially dangerous files and run unauthorized software. Everything seemed normal, even the worker was participating in video calls and working normal hours. Note that the work was 100% remote.
The company realized that the worker was a spy
Everything was going normally until July 15, 2024, a series of suspicious activities in this worker’s account. The company’s security department contacted him to ask about the anomaly. The worker responded that he had a problem with the router and I had followed some guides I found on the internet to solve the “low speed”.
Later, IT security contacted him again. However, he did not answer the call. This set off all the alarms in the company.
From there, an investigation began in which even the FBI participated. The results were incredible. The worker they hired had deceived the company. I was not even in the United States. Connected via VPN at night from North Korea to give the impression that he worked the same hours and in the same country as the rest of his colleagues.
Changing the employee’s image using AI
How is it possible that he deceived his own cybersecurity company? The worker, in addition to having a false identity, relied on AI to change its imageeven during video calls. No one suspected he was a North Korean spy. In fact, our HR team conducted four video conference interviews on different occasions.
Fortunately, KnowBe4 quickly realized this and none of your or your customers’ data has been compromised. But it remains surprising how, thanks to sophisticated artificial intelligence techniques, a false identity can be created.
Source | Knowbe4
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