Taiwan's Annual Military Drill Moves Out of the Shadows—and Into Everyday Life
On the other side of town, two CM-11 'Brave Tiger' battle tanks concealed behind a community center fired mock rounds at a rice paddy, the blasts echoing through the village.
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TechCrunch
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- TechCrunch
North Korean spies posing as remote workers have infiltrated hundreds of companies, says CrowdStrike
Researchers at security giant CrowdStrike say they have seen hundreds of cases where North Koreans posing as remote IT workers have infiltrated companies to generate money for the regime, marking a sharp increase over previous years. Per CrowdStrike's latest threat hunting report, the company has identified over 320 incidents over the past 12 months, up by 220% from the year earlier, in which North Koreans gained fraudulent employment at Western companies working remotely as developers. The scheme relies on North Koreans using false identities, resumes, and work histories to gain employment and earn money for the regime, as well as allowing access for the workers to steal data from the companies they work for and later extort them. The aim is to generate funds for North Korea's sanctioned nuclear weapons program, which has so far made billions of dollars for the regime to date. It's not known exactly how many North Korean IT workers are currently working for unknowing U.S. companies, but some have estimated the number to be in the thousands. According to CrowdStrike, the North Korean IT workers, which the company calls 'Famous Chollima' using its naming scheme of hacking groups, rely on generative AI and other AI-powered tools to draft resumes and modify or 'deepfake' their appearance during remote interviews. While the scheme is not new, North Koreans are increasingly succeeding at getting jobs, despite sanctions laws preventing U.S. companies from hiring North Korean workers. CrowdStrike said in its report that one of the ways to prevent hiring sanctioned workers is by implementing better identity verification processes during the hiring phase. TechCrunch has anecdotally heard of some crypto-focused companies asking prospective employees to say critical things about North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, in an effort to weed out potential spies. The would-be North Korean employees are often highly monitored and surveilled, making any such request impossible and likely outing the fraudulent worker. Over the past year, the U.S. Department of Justice has sought to disrupt these operations by going after the U.S.-based facilitators who help run and operate the scheme for their North Korean bosses. These operations have included targeting the individuals who run 'laptop farm' operations, which include racks of open laptops used by the North Koreans to remotely do their work as if they were physically located in the United States. Prosecutors said in a June indictment that one North Korean operation stole the identities of 80 individuals in the U.S. between 2021 and 2024 to get remote work at more than 100 U.S. companies.
Bloomberg
an hour ago
- Bloomberg
Billionaire Pleads Guilty in Gift Scandal That Rattled Singapore
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Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Barabak: In America's hardest-fought congressional district, voters agree: Release the Epstein files
When it comes to President Trump, Angie Zamora and Phaidra Medeiros agree on very little. Zamora, a 36-year-old Army veteran, has nothing good to say. "The laws. All the rights taken away from women. The stuff with ICE," Zamora said, ticking off her frustrations as she stopped outside the post office in the Central Valley community of Los Banos. "Why are they going after people working on farms when they're supposed to be chasing violent criminals?" Medeiros, by contrast, is delighted Trump replaced Joe Biden. "He wasn't mentally fit," Medeiros said of the elderly ex-president. "There was something wrong with him from the very beginning." Despite all that, the two do share one belief: Both say the government should cough up every last bit of information it has on Jeffrey Epstein, his sordid misdeeds and the powerful associates who moved in his aberrant orbit. Trump "did his whole campaign on releasing the Epstein files," Zamora said. "And now he's trying to change the subject. 'Oh, it's a 'hoax' ... 'Oh, you guys are still talking about that creep?' And yet there's pictures throughout the years of him with that creep." Medeiros, 56, echoed the sentiment. Read more: Barabak: Here's why Jeffrey Epstein's tangled web is conspiratorial catnip Trump and his fellow Republicans "put themselves into this predicament because they kept talking constantly" about the urgency of unsealing records in Epstein's sex-trafficking case — until they took control of the Justice Department and the rest of Washington. "Now," she said, "they're backpedaling." Medeiros paused outside the engineering firm where she works in the Central Valley, in Newman, on a tree-lined street adorned with star-spangled banners honoring local servicemen and women. "Obviously there were minors involved" in Epstein's crimes, she said, and if Trump is somehow implicated "then he needs to go down as well." Years after being found dead in a Manhattan prison cell — killed by his own hand, according to authorities — Epstein appears to have done the near-impossible in this deeply riven nation. He's united Democrats, Republicans and independents around a call to reveal, once and for all, everything that's known about his case. "He's dead now, but if people were involved they should be prosecuted," said Joe Toscano, a 69-year-old Los Banos retiree and unaffiliated voter who last year supported Trump's return to the White House. "Bring it all out there. Make it public." California's 13th Congressional District, where Zamora, Medeiros and Toscano all live, is arguably the most closely fought political terrain in America. Sprawling through California's midriff, from the far reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area to the southern edge of the San Joaquin Valley, it's farm country: flat, fertile and crossed-hatched with canals, rail lines and thruways with utilitarian names such as Road No. 32 and Avenue 18½. The myriad small towns are brief interludes amid the dairy and poultry farms and lush carpeting of vegetables, fruit and nut trees that stretch to the hazy-brown horizon. The most populous city, Merced, has fewer than 100,000 residents. (Modesto, with a population of around 220,000, is split between the 5th and 13th districts.) Democratic Rep. Adam Gray was elected in November in the closest House race in the country, beating the Republican incumbent, John Duarte, by 187 votes out of nearly 211,000 cast. The squeaker was a rematch and nearly a rerun. Two years prior, Duarte defeated Gray by fewer than 600 votes out of nearly 134,000 cast. Not surprisingly, both parties have made the 13th District a top target in 2026; handicappers rate the contest a toss-up, even as the field sorts itself out. (Duarte has said he would not run again.) The midterm election is a long way off, so it's impossible to say how the Epstein controversy will play out politically. But there is, at the least, a baseline expectation of transparency, a view that was repeatedly expressed in conversations with three dozen voters across the district. Zachery Ramos, a 25-year-old independent, is the founder of the Gustine Traveling Library, which promotes learning and literacy throughout the Central Valley. Its storefront, painted with polka dots and decorated with giant butterflies, sits like a cheery oasis in Gustine's four-block downtown, a riot of green spilling from the planter boxes out front. Inside, the walls were filled with commendations and newspaper clippings celebrating Ramos' good works. As a nonprofit, he said, "we have to have everything out there. All the books. Everything." Epstein, he suggested, should be treated no differently. "When it comes to something as serious as that, with what may or may not have taken place on his private island, with his girlfriend" — convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell — "I do think it should all be out in the open," Ramos said. "If you're not afraid of your name being in [the files], especially when you're dealing with minors being assaulted, it should 100% be made public." Read more: Commentary: Political ploy or bold move to save democracy? Our columnists debate Newsom redistricting threat Ed, a 42-year-old Democrat who manages a warehouse operation in Patterson, noted that Trump released the government's long-secret files on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., even though King's family objected. (Like several of those interviewed, he declined to give his last name, to avoid being hassled by readers who don't like what he had to say.) Why, Ed wondered, shouldn't the Epstein files come to light? "It wasn't just Trump," he said. "It was a lot of Republicans in Congress that said, 'Hey, we want to get these files out there.' And I believe if Kamala [Harris] had won, they would be beating her down, demanding she do so." He smacked a fist in his palm, to emphasize the point. Sue, a Madera Republican and no fan of Trump, expressed her feelings in staccato bursts of fury. "Apparently the women years ago said who was doing what, but nobody listens to the women," said the 75-year-old retiree. "Release it all! Absolutely! You play, you pay, buddy." Even those who dismissed the importance of Epstein and his crimes said the government should hold nothing back — if only to erase doubts and lay the issue to rest. Epstein "is gone and I don't really care if they release the files or not," said Diane Nunes, a 74-year-old Republican who keeps the books for her family farm, which lies halfway between Los Banos and Gustine. "But they probably should, because a lot of people are waiting for that." Patrick, a construction contractor, was more worked up about "pretty boy" Gavin Newsom and "Nazi Pelosi" — "yes, that's what I call her" — than anything that might be lurking in the Epstein files. "When the cat is dead, you don't pick it up and pet it. Right?" He motioned to the pavement, baking as the temperature in Patterson climbed into the low 90s. "It's over with," the 61-year-old Republican said of Epstein and his villainy. "Move on." At least, that would be his preference. But to "shut everybody up, absolutely, yeah, they should release them," Patrick said. "Otherwise, we're all going to be speculating forever." Or at least until the polls close in November 2026. Get the latest from Mark Z. BarabakFocusing on politics out West, from the Golden Gate to the U.S. me up. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Solve the daily Crossword
