Even safety experts can be cheated. In July 2024, Knowbe4, a company based in Florida, which offers security training, discovered that the fresh rental known as “Kyle” was in fact a foreign agent. “He conducted interviews great,” says Brian Jack, Knowbe information security director4. “He was in front of the camera, his CV was right, his control of the past was removed, his identification cleared the verification. We had no reason to suspect that he was not an important candidate.” But when his facilitator-the USA from the USA, which gives him protection-had the installation of malware on Kyle’s computer, the security team caught and turned off.
After returning to London, Simon Wijckmans could not give up the idea that someone was trying to cheat him. He just read about Knowbe4, which deepened his suspicions. He carried out inspections of the past and discovered that some of his candidates definitely operate stolen identities. And, he discovered, some of them were associated with known North Korea operations. So Wijckmans decided to conduct his own necessary exercises and invited me to observe.
I came to Google Meet at 3 am the Pacific time, tired and shiny. We deliberately chose this offensive early hour, because it is 6 am in Miami, where the candidate “Harry” claims.
Harry joins the conversation, looks quite fresh face. Perhaps it is in twenty, with brief, basic, black hair. Everything in it seems to be deliberately non -specific: he wears a plain black crew sweater and speaks to the headphone set. “I just woke up early today for this interview, no problem,” he says. “I know that working with the hours of Great Britain is a kind of requirement, so I can transfer my working hours to yours, so there is no problem with it.”
Until now, everything fits the characteristic feature of a false employee. Harry’s virtual origin is one of the default options provided by Google Meet, and its connection is tardy. His English is good, but heavily emphasized, even though he tells us that he was born in Up-to-date York and grew up in Brooklyn. Wijckmans starts with some typical interview questions, and Harry looks right when he answers. He talks about different coding languages and recording the names he knows. Wijckmans begins to ask deeper technical questions. Harry stops. It looks confused. “Can I join the meeting?” Asks. “I have a microphone problem.” Wijckman nods and Harry disappears.
A few minutes passed and I’m starting to worry that we scared him away, but then he returns to the meeting. His relationship is not much better, but his answers are clearer. Maybe he launched chatbot again or got a colleague to train him. The connection lasts a few minutes and we will say goodbye.
Our next applicant calls himself “nothing”. In his CV he has a link to a personal website, but this guy does not look like a profile photo on the site. This is his second interview with Wijckmans and we are sure that he pretended to be: he is one of the candidates who did not pass the past after his first phone, although he does not know it.
Nothing’s Angels is worse than Harry: when he asked what time it is, he tells us that there is “six and the past” before he improved and says “a quarter to seven”. Where does he live? “For now I’m in Ohio,” he radiates like a child who got something well in a pop quiz.