While many of us have returned to our workplaces following the disruption of the pandemic, the rise in remote working appears to be here to stay.  Even if most of your employees have come back to the office, hiring a remote support or development worker may seem attractive…but are you really sure you know what you’re getting?

According to the FBI and many large cybersecurity firms in a recent article on CNBC,, there’s a chance that the “person” that you are interviewing over a video call might not be there at all. 

Groups ranging from small bands of cryptolocker extortionists to sophisticated teams funded by nations such as North Korea are now leveraging AI video technology, fake credentials and voice cloning to infiltrate organizations, and both the number of attempts seen in the wild and the skill level of those involved seem to be rising rapidly.

The goals of these groups can vary as widely as their backgrounds, ranging from theft of company secrets, customer data, extortion…or in perhaps the least frightening example, simply a paycheck.  Regardless of their goals, even companies in cybersecurity can be fooled: the firm KnowBe4 recently reported that a North Korean software developer got through four video interviews and was actually hired on at the company before being discovered.

What can be done to combat this risk?  Technology to weed out fraudulent remote job seekers is advancing rapidly in a cat-and-mouse fashion with the attackers, with several firms already offering services claiming to help reduce the risk of hiring a fake employee.  For now though there are some easy, low-tech things interviewers can do, such as asking the applicant to wave their hand over their face or perform rapid head movements from side to side—both are things that current real-time AI video generation can struggle with.