Security researchers discovered North Korean hackers use Minion character aliases like Kevin and Gru, creating an unexpected subculture within state-sponsored cyber operations. One suspect's GitHub profile featured a Minion image, leading to a Wall Street Journal front-page story about how pop-culture memes infiltrate espionage.
Okay, so we have— they're talking about Gru all the time, they like to be named Kevin, and then there's what? There's just random chitchat about Despicable Me and— they call each other, hey minion, what's going on? That's what they do, they call each other—
well, I mean, the thing— okay, so this story started because I was having a dinner with a couple of security researchers who, um, were like, what's up with Kevin? Why are they all called Kevin? You know, they love the name Kevin. I was like, that's funny, that's— I should look into that, like, that could be a funny story. So I looked into it, and then the The point I knew I actually had a Wall Street Journal story, which by the way is an A-head, right? So that's for us, these are these like lighthearted kind of comical stories that we put on the front page. But the moment I knew I had a story was I interviewed a researcher who said, she was talking about this hack she had done and she was like investigating this person and their GitHub popped up and then she saw the Minion.
