Sounds much better than "Amazon surveils keystrokes of its IT workers"!
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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This was also my takeaway. Sounds like a security nightmare if they are logging any data.
Normal ass websites will monitor user inputs to do things like profile users. I’m pretty sure those “click to show youre not a robot” captchas actually capture how your mouse moves to the box, for example. It’s not that crazy honestly.
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Well it isn't paranoia if North Korean impostors really are working in your company.
Yeah, hate it all you want. But risk scales with the amount of employees you have. At the scale of Amazon you have to do literally everything to minimise risk.
How am I the first person to ask why they're measuring the latency on everyone's keystrokes?
Given they've had 1800 recent infiltration attempts, I understand their suspicion.
Literally, catching North Koreans might have been the idea. It's become a big issue.
Probably one of the less shocking things they track.
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.
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.
Maybe they just really like the Dark Sky initiative.
An entire country of astronomy nerds sounds like a tourist destination to me!
I like how they point out that tiny batch of lights near the coast are NK fishing boats while all the other massive clusters of lights on the ocean are South Korean, Chinese and Japanese fishing boats illegally using spotlights to attract fish.
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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.
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seeing the stars instead of light pollution doesn't sound like a bad thing on its own
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
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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.
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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.
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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On one side I feel like "cool, they managed to find a spy on this sophisticated way"
On the other side I'm thinking what kind of intrusive keylogging malware did they install on all their employees laptops...
This article is just building justification for spying on your employees
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I guess this is inevitable at huge companies. Nobody cares about the actual person you're hiring, it's just another position to fill. Of course there will be fakes of all kinds.
It’s not that, it’s that they are incredibly sophisticated in their techniques. I just had to sit through 90 minutes of training about how to spot fake applicants.
I don't get why companies can't solve this problem entirely by just flying out applicants for in-person interviews towards the end of the hiring process. Or hell, maybe only even ask the candidate to fly out for a visit after they've already accepted the job offer. Just one minimal and relatively cheap step to confirm the remote worker you're hiring is who they claim to be. For the cost of a flight, a night or two in a hotel, and some meal vouchers, you can verify someone's identity. Sure, maybe not for freelance work. But for any well paid technical field? This is a trivial expense.
I feel this can be bypassed the same way remote interviews have been passed, you have a talented dude A actually trained to pass whatever verification is needed, and whenever there's privacy, it switches to dude B, while dude A moves to another recruitment process. I think I have heard about this kind of dude A offering his services online for anyone ready to pay.
Anyone else has never seen the face of one of their full remote colleague? I have one in my team, he does a good job though, however many they may be behind him.
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I don't like Amazon but I will admit here I got to respect both the fact that they disclosed this instead of hid it and the fact that they are actively looking for this instead of burying their heads in the sand.
Oooor it's corporate propagande about their totalitarian surveillance system.
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I wonder how many they've missed over the years, this kind of thing has been occuring since at least 2012.
Reminded me of the 'critical infrastructure company' (I presume utility) software developer who handed all his credentials over to a worker in China, including mailing them his RSA keyfob, and wasn't discovered for months until the company security team noticed VPN logins coming from China.
Apparently it's become even easier for malicious remote workers to fake resumes and identities to gain jobs via AI, so I hope all major companies are monitoring their remote access very closely.
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