Even safety experts can be due. In July 2024, Knowbe4, a company based in Florida which offers security training, discovered that a new hiring known as “Kyle” was in fact a foreign agent. “He interviewed,” said Brian Jack, director of information security at Knowbe4. “He was on the camera, his curriculum vitae was right, his verification of the antecedents erased, his identity card erased the verification. We had no reason to suspect that this was not a valid candidate.” But when his facilitator – the US -based individual giving him a coverage – sorted to install malware on the Kyle company's computer, the security team has come up and excluded it.
Back in London, Simon Wijckmans could not abandon the idea that someone had tried to deceive him. He had just read on the Knowbe4 affair, which deepened his suspicions. He carried out history checks and discovered that some of his candidates were definitively used stolen identities. And, he discovered that some of them were linked to known North Korean operations. So Wijckmans decided to carry out a little counter-exercise, and he invited me to observe.
I compose myself at Google Meet at 3 am, at the Pacific time, tired and launched. We deliberately chose this hour offensively early because it is 6 am in Miami, where the candidate, “Harry”, claims to be.
Harry joins the call, the air quite fresh. It may be at the end of the twenty, with short black hair, rights. Everything that seems to him to be deliberately non -specific: he wears a black and black cart sweater and speaks in a helmet outside the brand. “I just woke up early today for this interview, no problem,” he said. “I know that working with British hours is a kind of requirement, so I can get my working hours in yours, so no problem with that.”
Until now, everything corresponds to the characteristics of a false worker. Harry's virtual background is one of the default options provided by Google Meet, and its connection is slow. His English is good but strongly accentuated, even if he tells us that he was born in New York and grew up in Brooklyn. Wijckmans starts with a few typical interview questions, and Harry continues to take a look at his right while he answers. He talks about various languages of coding and depresses the frameworks he knows. Wijckmans is starting to ask deeper technical questions. Harry takes a break. He looks confused. “Can I join Reunion?” he asks. “I have a problem with my microphone.” Wijckman nods and Harry disappears.
A few minutes pass, and I am starting to worry that we frightened him, but he returns to the meeting. Its connection is not much better, but its answers are clearer. Maybe he restarted his chatbot or obtained a colleague to train him. The call lasts a few more minutes and we say goodbye.
Our next applicant calls himself “Nic”. On his curriculum vitae, he has a link to a personal website, but this guy does not look much like the profile photo on the site. This is his second interview with Wijckmans, and we are sure that he does it: he is one of the candidates who failed the check of the history after his first call, although he does not know.
Nic's English is worse than that of Harry: when he asked what time he is, he tells us that it is “six and past” before correcting himself and saying “quarter to seven”. Where does he live? “I am in Ohio for the moment,” he radiates, like a child who has had something in a pop quiz.
