A North Korean imposter was uncovered, working as a sysadmin at Amazon U.S., after their keystroke input lag raised suspicions with security specialists at the online retail giant. Normally, a U.S.-based remote worker’s computer would send keystroke data within tens of milliseconds. This suspicious individual’s keyboard lag was “more than 110 milliseconds,” reports Bloomberg.
Amazon is commendably proactive in its pursuit of impostors, according to the source report. The news site talked with Amazon’s Chief Security Officer, Stephen Schmidt, about this fascinating new case of North Koreans trying to infiltrate U.S. organizations to raise hard currency for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and sometimes indulge in espionage and/or sabotage.
I’m never quite sure how to feel about this. On one hand, if the person just wants to make some money and they’re doing the job, why bother them. On the other hand though, I know that anybody who has consistent access to an internet connection in North Korea is almost certainly working for the benefit of the great leader and they aren’t actually seeing any money or benefit for themselves. I just hate that the citizens of North Korea have to suffer and be punished because of their asswipe of a leader.
Then you surely condemn the global sanctions on North Korean economy? Especially given the recent study showing how US+EU sanctions murder half a million people yearly since over 50 years ago.
When you look at the ISS pics of NK during the night, you get a sense of how bad it is for most of the population.
https://www.38north.org/2023/04/a-fresh-look-at-north-korea-at-night/
Always curious to hear how NK has no electricity, but they manage to hack the systems of a trillion dollar conglomerate on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.
The contradictions abound.
Do you seriously not realize that the corrupt dictatorial government might have a bit more quality of life things and resources than the oppressed peasant class?
I think maybe they’re just better about not pointing their lights upward at night
You believe that North Korea actually is electrified but they just avoid light pollution? They are among the least electrified countries in the world.
The ironic part is that they’re the only country of the world with a drawing of an hydroelectric plant on their emblem
Maybe they just really like the Dark Sky initiative.
An entire country of astronomy nerds sounds like a tourist destination to me!
It kind of amazes me they don’t have better infrastructure. It’s not like they’re shy about forced labor.
You can only do so much with forced labour. They aren’t doing their best, just “enough” to not get punished.
I’m sure plenty of them also use malicious compliance and sabotage stuff to get back at the top brass.
There’s a certain irony in this statement, coming from folks who consume it regularly.
seeing the stars instead of light pollution doesn’t sound like a bad thing on its own
Eh, this doesn’t sound like the job you would give someone in a prison camp. You’re talking about people that you’re allowing to interact and work regularly with foreigners outside the country. That does not sound like the type of position you trust to a political prisoner. That sounds like a position you put someone of high trust. It’s probably a pretty cushy job as the standards of North Korea go. Sure beats scratching at dirt or working in some godawful arms factory. It’s probably the type of job you need some good family connections in the Party in order to get. Sure, the government takes all the direct monetary benefit of the work, but that is just kindof how Communist systems work. I imagine the people working those jobs have some of the highest standards of living available to people that aren’t senior party leadership.
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They’re also a security threat. Any opportunity to exfiltrate potentially profitable or leverageable data will be taken. I’d bet they’re used to sniff out vulnerabilities for ransomware attacks too. I definitley identify and agree with the healthy sympathy (I guess empathy if you’re in the states, our leader more than qualifies as an asswipe) for the citizens of North Korea
But thats good, the USA is carrying out genocide in Palestine and is about to invade Venezuela. And Amazon is no saint either.
The US is enabling and providing political cover for the Palestinian genocide, Israel is carrying it out. I don’t think an invasion of Venezuela is imminent, just the same kind of underhanded manipulation and isolation that has been done to Cuba for the past half century. Agreed Amazon sucks.
None of that changes the fact that only thing that these North Korean tech workers do is help Kim fund his military projects and his Bourgeoisie lifestyle
…and economic support, and military support defending their coastlines and boats, and military support defending them from Iran, and most of the weapons used on Palestinians are of US origin.
Then you’ll be probably horrified to learn that US+EU economic sanction have murdered half a million people per year since 1971 per the latest academic health research estimates. This is more death than the deaths from war since 1971 on average.
I’m aware of all that about Gaza. No excuses from me, I find it horrifying and shameful. Same as far as sanctions go (I do agree with the Russia ones where it’s a tool to get an actual war to end, or sanctions against individuals in certain contexts). I agree with you on the last point too, it’s just that Jeff doesn’t style himself as a hero of the Proletariat. I dunno who’s responsible for more human suffering between the two, but the hypocrisy does piss me off. They can both get fucked as far as I’m concerned.
Good, at least we agree that sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela are horrifying and they murder hundreds of thousands.
My main problem with the big criticism against North Korea is how little we actually know of the country, the level of corruption, and the actual reasons why the people there have a low material standard of living.
North Korea is a reclusive and inwards country not because of a personal idea of the Kim family, but because of its recent history. In the 1950s, North Korea was bombed by the USA with an unimaginable amount of explosives, in one of the most violent and extensive bombing campaigns in human history, to the point that [85% of all buildings in the country were destroyed] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_North_Korea?wprov=sfla1), and hundreds of thousands if not millions died violent deaths (without counting starvation and disease from the destruction of all infrastructure). The country was quite literally bombed into the stone age.
After being utterly destroyed, when the Korean War froze, North Korea was subjected to an almost complete economic embargo by all nations except the eastern block, so it could rely only in the USSR for trade. As a country without much in the way of arable lands (mountainous and cold) or natural resources (its only reliable energy sources are coal and hydro), it was forced by external forces to adopt its current policy of Juche.
When in 1990 the USSR was dissolved, North Korea, much like Cuba, saw itself entirely isolated from the world, unable to trade with any partner due to the immense economic sanctions it was subjected to for the cardinal sin of being communist. This caused a massive rise in poverty in the country, problems with energy generation, food supplies…
Maybe if North Korea had been allowed to freely trade in the international market to exploit its advantages and cover its disadvantages, it would have thrived much more than it has, and it wouldn’t rely so much on state power to secure its own ideological thesis without external interference. Most of what we read about North Korea is false anyway, stuff like the “intergenerational gulags” is literally made up much like the Iraq WMDs.
My point is: the west is entirely responsible for the current state of North Korea, from the entire destruction of the country to its isolation in the international economic sphere. Criticizing from our high point of view the people that have been subjected to millions of deaths from our actions isn’t exactly the most honest thing to do, especially when it’s done using false stuff like the intergenerational prisons I mentioned. North Korea has a lot of problems, no doubt, but the way to solve these problems is to let them flourish and develop by themselves, not to further continue murdering millions of them through economic sanctions.
North Korea intentionally does this to get revenue for the state.
These people are definitely not there just to make some money. And whatever money they make will be used to prop up the genocidal regime.
Are you talking about the USA Amazon workers propping up the USA genocidal regime, as seen in Palestine? Because, AFAIK, there’s no genocide going on as a consequence of North Korea. Care to elaborate?
I’d say locking up a substantial part of your population, including their families in murderous gulags amounts to genocide. Oh, and did anybody say Arduous March?
US has highest prison population in the world, 1 in 5 black men go through the prison system. Is that genocide?
This is fox news propaganda, similar level to “weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”
Gulags are just prisons. GULAG is the acronym of the penitentiary system of the USSR.