[danielvf]

These aren't spies first. They are often children of well to do, high loyalty group North Koreans. It's just a privileged job.

The skill and IQ level varies widely, from super smart to super unskilled. And these roughly get sorted out into different groups with different MO's. North Koreans aren't some uniformly skilled group. You could be targeted by a team of world class bytecode exploit geniuses who rehearses every move, or by the equivalent of Milton from Office Space.

Dissing Kim is something that is not currently widely permitted in NK. Just isn't worth personally.

Not saying no one from NK never will, but so far almost everyone will immediately stop the conversation at this point. There are plenty of crypto people who have monthly or weekly encounters with NK job applicants.

[the_af]

I find this answer highly implausible, not the least because maintaining cover doesn't count as dissing ("I infiltrated the org by telling them the lies they wanted to hear" is hacking 101). Also, North Koreans aren't dumb.

I find some people's attitude to NK hackers slightly schizophrenic: either they are a credible threat or they are amateurs. Which one is it?

> Dissing Kim is something that is not currently widely permitted in NK

This wouldn't be "widely", this would be a specific interaction with a hostile foreigner for the purpose of infiltrating them. It's not the same as being allowed to say this to fellow North Koreans.

> Not saying no one from NK never will, but so far almost everyone will immediately stop the conversation at this point.

Legitimate candidates would at this point too, so as a tactic this is useless.

[sorcerer-mar]

> I find some people's attitude to NK hackers slightly schizophrenic: either they are a credible threat or they are amateurs. Which one is it?

I have no clue whether the proposed approach works, but there's a pretty coherent model that explains how it could, no schizophrenia needed: They are competent people in a cult.

Being unable/unwilling to diss Dear Leader even when it's advantageous to do so is very typical cult stuff. In fact, it's sort of why cults are dangerous. They compel people to do maladaptive things in service of the "ideals" of the group/leader.

This applies both to the spy directly (perhaps they would personally be unwilling to say such a thing), but also to their entire chain of command. Cults by their nature are not good at passing nuanced instruction like "you can say bad things about Dear Leader under these circumstances." Just because you're willing to diss KJU to get in the door doesn't mean you know your entire chain of superiors are cool with it.

[danielvf]

I am saying they are both a credible threat and many are amateurs. Those are not mutually exclusive.

You are talking about North Korea attackers from a theoretical point of view. For many people dealing with them is just a normal part of work. It's not an unknown that needs to be worked out logically from an armchair.

I'm saying this as someone who personally chatted with a North Korea persona that later tried to drop exploits on people, and the persona belonged to hacking group with at least one 50 million dollar heist. I've also seen the screenshots on many chats with North Koreans.