North Korean animators have been working on Amazon and HBO shows!

[thewayne]

A security researcher found an Amazon-hosted cloud server not properly secured and tied to North Korean IP addresses. He started poking around inside it, and found gobs of animation cells and sequences for new shows airing on Amazon Prime and HBO Max!

American sanctions against Little Kim's regime include businesses based in the USA not allowed to do business with any companies in NK. Most likely a number of shell companies are obfuscating the true origin of the workers and the production companies are unaware of where their animators are.

Makes you wonder what certifications will be put in place to try to prevent such subterfuge in the future.

https://www.wired.com/story/north-korea-amazon-max-animation-exposed-server/

Comments

[kaishin108]

That is wild!

[moxie_man]

Oh, "I'm sure" Amazon/HBO didn't know this.

[disneydream06]

I wonder if there will be any fall out from this?
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

The law that prohibits companies from doing business in NK does have teeth in it, so it's entirely possible there could be fines.  We shall see.

[disneydream06]

Somebody pop the corn. lol...

[silveradept]

That's not completely surprising to me that it happens. That it was that poorly configured so others could see it, that is surprising. But animation gets farmed out to other places and subsidiaries all the time, and I'd bet they also do some of that farming out themselves, and eventually it passes through enough companies that someone who does work with North Korean people farms it out to them, without any care about whether or not they're violating US sanctions, because they're just doing work, y'know.