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 weblog publish this week, calling it a cautionary story that was luckily detected earlier than inflicting any main issues.

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

KnowBe4 stated it was on the lookout for a software program engineer for its inner IT AI workforce. The agency employed an individual who, it seems, was from North Korea and was “utilizing a legitimate however stolen US-based identification” 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 publish known as “an Insider Menace/Nation State Actor.”

KnowBe4 operates in 11 international locations and is headquartered in Florida. It gives safety consciousness coaching, together with phishing safety exams, to company clients. If you happen to sometimes obtain a faux phishing e mail out of your employer, you may be working for a corporation that makes use of the KnowBe4 service to check its staff’ means to identify scams.

Particular person Handed Background Examine and Video Interviews

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

Although the picture offered to HR was faux, the one who was interviewed for the job apparently regarded sufficient prefer it to cross. KnowBe4’s HR workforce “carried out 4 video convention based mostly interviews on separate events, confirming the person matched the picture offered on their utility,” the publish stated. “Moreover, a background test and all different customary pre-hiring checks have been carried out and got here again clear as a result of stolen identification getting used. This was an actual particular person utilizing a legitimate however stolen US-based identification. The image was AI ‘enhanced.'”

The 2 photos on the prime of this story are a inventory picture and what KnowBe4 says is the AI faux based mostly on the inventory picture. The inventory picture is on the left, and the AI faux is on the suitable.

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

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

The attacker carried out numerous actions to govern session historical past recordsdata, switch doubtlessly 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 acknowledged he was unavailable for a name and later turned unresponsive. At round 10:20 pm EST SOC contained XXXX’s gadget.

“Pretend IT Employee From North Korea”

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

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

KnowBe4 stated it could possibly’t present a lot element due to the lively FBI investigation. However the particular person employed for the job could have logged into the corporate laptop 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 evening 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 properly, and provides a big quantity to North Korea to fund their unlawful applications. I haven’t got to let you know concerning the extreme threat of this. It is good we’ve new staff in a extremely restricted space once they begin, and don’t have any entry to manufacturing methods. Our controls caught it, however that was positive a studying second that I’m pleased to share with everybody.

This story initially appeared on Ars Technica.