>This is most likely a laptop farm, where someone in the US agrees to run the laptop from a legitimate address for a fee, typically around $200 a computer, according to Meyers. Last year the FBI busted one such operation in Nashville, Tennessee, and charged the operator with conspiracy to cause damage to protected computers, conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, intentional damage to protected computers, aggravated identity theft, and conspiracy to cause the unlawful employment of aliens.
I don't quite understand the "laptop farm" concept. Can anyone explain it?
Employers in the U.S. are expecting to see domestic IP addresses.
A laptop farm hosts the corporate laptop (domestically) that is sent to the remote worker. Hardware is provided to work the power remotely, along with all other functions.
Once again showing that "IP Address" filtering is pretty useless if you're trying to keep out someone who's targeting you. It probably does work somewhat to stop bots and crawlers.
You have a bunch of laptops running software that accesses services that are normally restricted (like access per IP or IPs from certain countries would set off alarm bells) the client paying for the laptop can run something that does the work or submits the work from the IP address space that is OK. I contracted for one company and saw an office that had one department with a closet full of laptops scanning Craigslist ads because they were getting blocked if they didn’t take this measure but don’t know the details but they figured out a workaround and automated it to scrape data daily from all Craigslists regions daily.
At many jobs it will need to be more sophisticated than simple IP spoofing, because the laptops have EDR software installed to monitor employee usage. It would be suspicious if the employee laptop is doing nothing but proxy internet traffic.
I suspect these farms have full-fledged remote KVM setups.
I don't quite understand the "laptop farm" concept. Can anyone explain it?