The Fake Interview

Red Asgard
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The Fake Interview is a narrative security investigation about how a fake coding interview became a global credential-theft operation. Across the series, valh4x and Red Asgard Security Research trace a DPRK-linked, Lazarus-attributed campaign from malicious developer repositories to exposed command-and-control infrastructure, blockchain dead drops, malware payloads, operator mistakes, victim data, and the uncomfortable question every threat hunter eventually faces: who is watching whom? This show is built for security researchers, developers, threat intelligence teams, Web3 engineers, and anyone who wants to understand how modern social-engineering operations actually work. Topics include fake recruiter personas, malicious coding tests, developer compromise, C2 infrastructure, malware analysis, credential theft, blockchain abuse, OPSEC failures, and the defender lessons learned from following the evidence. Attribution is handled carefully. The show distinguishes between confirmed technical evidence, high-confidence assessment, and unresolved questions.

Episodes

  1. The Day It Became Access: How Fake Interviews Turn Developer Trust Into Attack Surface

    7h ago

    The Day It Became Access: How Fake Interviews Turn Developer Trust Into Attack Surface

    A fake interview does not become dangerous only when malware runs. In Episode 8 of The Fake Interview, we step back from the repository, the workstation, and the Google Mirror to look at the behavioral layer that made the campaign work: cooperation. The recruiter message, the plausible company, the broken call, the shared repository, the real browser, the login prompt, the screen share — none of these has to look malicious by itself. Together, they move a developer from suspicion into trust. This episode asks when the compromise really begins, why developer identity is an access path, and why suspicious interviews should never touch the same environment where real credentials, source-control sessions, cloud consoles, wallets, and work accounts already live. No victim data, credentials, live endpoints, reusable access steps, or operational exploit details are included.

    31 min
  2. The Google Mirror: Browser Trust as the Attack Surface

    Jun 11

    The Google Mirror: Browser Trust as the Attack Surface

    Last episode, The Fake Interview followed OtterCookie inside the developer workstation. Episode 7 moves one step outward. The Google Mirror is about a different layer of the same operation: not the repository, not the payload, not the screenshot loop, but the trusted identity path around the machine. The investigation found infrastructure positioned to proxy Google services, with behavior specific enough to separate it from ordinary command-and-control infrastructure and from a generic phishing page. This episode is careful about what the evidence does and does not support. It does not claim Google was compromised. It does not claim a certificate authority was compromised. It does not claim the delivery path into the mirror was confirmed. What it does show is more precise: the campaign had infrastructure for the identity layer around developer compromise. A Google account is not one account. For a developer, it can be mail, calendar, documents, OAuth, password recovery, browser sync, shared drives, cloud access, source-control recovery, and the map of where work goes next. The repository asked the developer to run code. OtterCookie waited for the developer to keep working. The mirror waited for the developer to trust the browser. This was The Fake Interview.

    27 min
  3. OtterCookie: The Malware That Watched the Developer

    Jun 6

    OtterCookie: The Malware That Watched the Developer

    Every five seconds, OtterCookie took another look at the workstation. Episode 06 of The Fake Interview examines OtterCookie, a second-stage malware family associated with DPRK-linked Contagious Interview activity. Where earlier stages helped explain how fake technical interviews moved developers from conversation to code execution, OtterCookie shows what the operation wanted after the code was already running. This episode focuses on the real target: the developer workstation. Not an empty sandbox. Not a clean analysis VM. The real machine, with browser history, terminal residue, clipboard activity, authenticated sessions, wallets, cloud consoles, source-control access, and work still in motion. OtterCookie matters because it moved the compromise from static theft toward live observation. A credential dump captures one moment. A watcher can wait for the work to happen. In this episode: OtterCookie’s role in the broader fake-interview pipeline Why screenshots and keyboard capture mean something different on real workstations Why clean sandboxes can miss the operational value of the implant How wallet targeting changes the personal stakes for Web3 developers Why “use a VM” is right, but incomplete Why the developer became the perimeter This episode avoids live indicators, exploit walkthroughs, victim records, and reusable operational detail. The goal is to explain the campaign safely: what changed, why it mattered, and what developers and defenders should understand. The real workstation was the target. The Fake Interview is a narrative technical podcast from Red Asgard about DPRK-linked fake interview campaigns targeting developers.

    29 min
  4. the FTP Server: How One Boring Label Hid a Second Layer of the Campaign

    May 28

    the FTP Server: How One Boring Label Hid a Second Layer of the Campaign

    Episode 05 focuses on how infrastructure can be misclassified during an active investigation. The server discussed here was initially understood through its FTP exfiltration role. Later evidence tied the same host to additional campaign-linked services, including OtterCookie-related collection behavior.

    34 min
  5. Eleven Hours: Inside the Lazarus Operator’s Disk After the Fake Interview Campaign

    May 20

    Eleven Hours: Inside the Lazarus Operator’s Disk After the Fake Interview Campaign

    A live adversary server. Two password changes. Eleven hours. Episode 04 follows the forensic window where researchers preserved a contested Windows machine used in a Lazarus-attributed fake-interview campaign, uncovering the operator workbench behind the lures: campaign archives, fake-company material, targeting pipelines, wallet artifacts, browser traces, and signs of AI-assisted workflow.

    26 min
  6. The Factory: How a Lazarus-Attributed Credential Pipeline Collected Its Own Operators

    May 14

    The Factory: How a Lazarus-Attributed Credential Pipeline Collected Its Own Operators

    Episode 3 focuses on the operator side of the campaign: - why the collection pipeline did not distinguish between targets and operators; - how operator workstations appeared in material collected by the campaign; - how those workstations exposed social-engineering workflow, persona infrastructure, testing behavior, provisioning activity, and command structure; - why OtterCookie should be understood as a post-access occupation tool; - what defenders can learn from the factory model without needing access to sensitive data.

    31 min

  7. Season 1 Trailer

    Trailer: The Fake Interview

    A fake coding interview. A malicious repository. A real developer workstation. The Fake Interview is a Red Asgard narrative investigation into a DPRK-linked, Lazarus-attributed campaign targeting developers, Web3 engineers, and freelance technologists through job offers, coding tests, and trust. Start with Episode 1: Real Blood on the Wire.

    1 min
  8. The Repository That Called Home: Lazarus, Fake Interviews, and Malicious Code

    May 6

    The Repository That Called Home: Lazarus, Fake Interviews, and Malicious Code

    Episode 2 of The Fake Interview follows the first repository: a fake software project delivered through a job interview that behaved like real work until the moment it called home. We examine how a malicious coding test abused normal developer behavior: opening a project, trusting a workspace, installing dependencies, running local code, and debugging what looked like a broken app. This episode covers: - DPRK-linked fake interview activity - malicious GitHub / contractor repositories - VSCode and Cursor workspace trust abuse - run-on-folder-open execution - Function.constructor abuse in JavaScript - Vercel-hosted stage-one infrastructure - payload delivery and command-and-control routing - why developer machines are high-value targets Companion notes: https://podcast.redasgard.com/pages/companion-technical-notes-episode-02-the-repository-that-called-home

    24 min
  9. Real Blood on the Wire: How a Fake Coding Interview Exposed Lazarus Credential Theft

    Apr 29

    Real Blood on the Wire: How a Fake Coding Interview Exposed Lazarus Credential Theft

    In this episode of The Fake Interview, we investigate how a fake coding interview became a credential theft operation targeting software developers, Web3 engineers, and cryptocurrency workers. Topics covered: - Lazarus / DPRK-linked Contagious Interview activity - malicious coding tests - developer workstation compromise - credential theft - malware infrastructure - threat intelligence lessons for security teams Companion notes: https://podcast.redasgard.com/pages/companion-technical-notes-episode-1-real-blood-on-the-wire

    26 min

Trailer

About

The Fake Interview is a narrative security investigation about how a fake coding interview became a global credential-theft operation. Across the series, valh4x and Red Asgard Security Research trace a DPRK-linked, Lazarus-attributed campaign from malicious developer repositories to exposed command-and-control infrastructure, blockchain dead drops, malware payloads, operator mistakes, victim data, and the uncomfortable question every threat hunter eventually faces: who is watching whom? This show is built for security researchers, developers, threat intelligence teams, Web3 engineers, and anyone who wants to understand how modern social-engineering operations actually work. Topics include fake recruiter personas, malicious coding tests, developer compromise, C2 infrastructure, malware analysis, credential theft, blockchain abuse, OPSEC failures, and the defender lessons learned from following the evidence. Attribution is handled carefully. The show distinguishes between confirmed technical evidence, high-confidence assessment, and unresolved questions.

Information

  • Creator
    Red Asgard
  • Years Active
    2K
  • Episodes
    9
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Red Asgard
  • Show Website
    The Fake Interview