State sponsored actors are actively leveraging high paying, US based, tech jobs and contract positions as a method to circumvent sanctions in order to obtain funding for their government programs. This tactic is so common that the US State Department has issued a “Reward for Justice” seeking information about the activities of a specific country. They’re just the high profile ones. Other sanctioned regimes are doing it too.

We’ll review how these actors get hired and what to look out for during the hiring process. Next we cover patterns of behavior and technical indicators that could reveal your new hire isn’t who you think they are. Finally, we’ll discuss potential courses of action you can take if they’re discovered AFTER they’ve been onboarded.