During Covid, there was a strong movement towards firms allowing their workers to work at home, especially in the IT industry.

Now, we read that many of them are demanding their workers return to the office.

I have discovered one very real reason for this. Nothing to do with productivity or staff cohesion or supervisory efficiency.

The following newsletter article from WealthSimple spells it out.

https://tldr-archive.wealthsimple.com/archive/33--trump-vs-tacos

The second article. North Korean operatives are applying remotely for these IT jobs, and succeeding in getting them. Once they obtain this job (in large part, through AI manipulation in the employment interview process), not only do the salaries paid to these employees go back to North Korea, but North Korean operatives gain full back door insider employee access to all of the data of that company. An interesting twist on insider hacking -instead of hacking the account of a legitimate employee, the agents ARE the employee. It is apparently prevalent and widespread in major American firms. If the company never sees the employee, exactly how do they know the employee is resident in Canada? Only way to be really sure, is to require them to regularly show up in person at the office.

Although the article is mainly about this phenomena in America, it is also undoubtedly happening in Canada.

As far as we can tell, Canada hasn’t arrested any laptop farmers yet, but we tend to be a step behind the Americans on these sorts of things.

I can easily see why firms would not want to be open about these security breaches, but one just has to wonder if many of the ‘insider’ data breaches that have been publicly acknowledged by some Canadian corporations and government organizations were not the result of these North Korean laptop farms? Especially the ones that are heavily involved in the ‘work at home’ culture, or have a large exposure to US-based cloud data services.

During Covid, there was a strong movement towards firms allowing their workers to work at home, especially in the IT industry.

Now, we read that many of them are demanding their workers return to the office.

I have discovered one very real reason for this. Nothing to do with productivity or staff cohesion or supervisory efficiency.

The following newsletter article from WealthSimple spells it out.

https://tldr-archive.wealthsimple.com/archive/33--trump-vs-tacos

The second article. North Korean operatives are applying remotely for these IT jobs, and succeeding in getting them. Once they obtain this job (in large part, through AI manipulation in the employment interview process), not only do the salaries paid to these employees go back to North Korea, but North Korean operatives gain full back door insider employee access to all of the data of that company. An interesting twist on insider hacking -instead of hacking the account of a legitimate employee, the agents ARE the employee. It is apparently prevalent and widespread in major American firms. If the company never sees the employee, exactly how do they know the employee is resident in Canada? Only way to be really sure, is to require them to regularly show up in person at the office.

Although the article is mainly about this phenomena in America, it is also undoubtedly happening in Canada.

As far as we can tell, Canada hasn’t arrested any laptop farmers yet, but we tend to be a step behind the Americans on these sorts of things.

I can easily see why firms would not want to be open about these security breaches, but one just has to wonder if many of the ‘insider’ data breaches that have been publicly acknowledged by some Canadian corporations and government organizations were not the result of these North Korean laptop farms? Especially the ones that are heavily involved in the ‘work at home’ culture, or have a large exposure to US-based cloud data services.

If the company never sees the employee, exactly how do they know the employee is resident in Canada?

If you have a competent HR department, this isn’t an issue. And if you have a competent managerial team, this also isn’t an issue.

I’m sure this plays some role. I’m also certain that the countries those same corporations offshore their labour to countries who do the same thing, and no one cares.

I also don’t think we can ignore that real estate is a big money maker for people with wealth, and WFH impacted their bottom line.

Or that many of the CEOs, boards, people at the top have a certain predisposition for wanting power and control, which is harder to flex if people might be able to also do laundry while working or, gasp, take a longer lunch and -still- get their work done.

Anyway, I’m sure it influences the decision, but I don’t think it’s the top driver.

The wandering chain in this discourse makes me want to think ‘AI Chatbot’.

Guess you’ll never know. If only you could check user post history to see.

Actually, you can. Or at least I can.

Of course, a Chatbot probably would not know this.

Missed the sarcasm, I see.