The Transformation of Technical Tests into Cybersecurity Threats: Examining the Vulnerabilities in Interview Exercises that Facilitate Data Theft
Putting together an environment, running an exercise, and demonstrating logic and fluency with the keyboard. What wasn’t on the checklist was asking oneself if that exercise is actually malicious payload. They have perfected a new attack vector: turning selection tests into camouflaged malware aimed at —the keys that unlock servers, repositories, and cryptographic wallets.
## The deception: looking legitimate to deceive an expert
. Then comes the “technical test to advance the interview.” This is where social engineering comes in: trust, haste, and the normality of the process. A case recounted by developer David Dodda shows the pattern: code that to the untrained eye seemed normal, but attackers take advantage of the fact that candidates often work on their machines with access to. A single malicious run can dump files, read environment variables, or open connections to remote servers controlled by the attacker.
## The technical mechanics: backdoors disguised as useful functions
Technically, the vectors are elegant: backdoors that install persistent agents or create reverse tunnels to external infrastructures have also been detected. The specificity of the target (senior programmers, infrastructure maintainers) raises the prize: access to repositories, API keys, customer data, and crypto wallets. Research and data show that since 2022, targeted campaigns have proliferated, where the attacker targets not general users, but professionals with high privileges.
## What a developer (and companies) can do to avoid falling
The time pressure and faith in the offer complicate defense, but there are practical measures: running tests in isolated environments (VMs or disposable containers), reviewing code with linters/ofuscation checkers, not using real credentials in exercises, disabling automatic synchronizations, and requesting confirmation through official channels. For companies:
## Recruitment as a new front in cyber warfare
have gone from being a skills test to an attractive attack surface for sophisticated criminals. When trust and haste combine, even an experienced programmer can be seconds away from executing code that compromises their professional world. The lesson is clear:
