They say they're a software developer from a poor country looking for someone willing to leave their laptop on overnight for a 50% split of the paycheck. I got one a long time ago, they even mentioned they need help because their can't do the work from an IP of their country. Needless to say I just trashed the email and only figured out it was one of those after reading about the NK employee scandal on here.
Yep! They are rampant on Upwork. You could probably find a cell of them in a day if you wanted, just go looking for jobs with the 'crypto' tag, haha. They have offered me serious sums of money to "simply install RDP and give us access to your network". I imagine people desperate enough take them up on it too.
Does that happen?? I’ve always been curious how those things go down
They say they're a software developer from a poor country looking for someone willing to leave their laptop on overnight for a 50% split of the paycheck. I got one a long time ago, they even mentioned they need help because their can't do the work from an IP of their country. Needless to say I just trashed the email and only figured out it was one of those after reading about the NK employee scandal on here.
Yep! They are rampant on Upwork. You could probably find a cell of them in a day if you wanted, just go looking for jobs with the 'crypto' tag, haha. They have offered me serious sums of money to "simply install RDP and give us access to your network". I imagine people desperate enough take them up on it too.
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They're mostly harmless residential VPN stuff so people in wherever can pretend to be an American to Netflix or whatever.
The actually "crimey" stuff is the minority. If it weren't it'd be too easy to crack down on. Same math as laundering through a real business.
Usually not so bluntly in the first email but I’ve seen a few emails in my spam that seem likely to have been leading that direction.
Yes, though the North Korean angle was implied? I thought it is more likely to be a blackhat interview service than the North Korean themselves.
Usually it's the Phillipines or an African country or something, but so very many times.
The better scams are now laundering NK through sub-Saharan Africa first.
How much does it pay?
Going rate seems to be 18 months: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-us-nationals-sentenced-fa...
Amazingly, Gmail dumps those straight to spam bucket for me. And yep, I get them.