North Korea Introduces 'Secure' E-mail

An anonymous reader sent in a strange little story running over at ZD that discusses North Korea's new secure email system. There's a lot of strange bits in there about trained North Korean hackers, and the fact that North Korea's news agency is hosted in Japan.

Comments

Time-honored facts...

[typobox43]

Again, they're just proving that the best security method is just to not let anyone on the system at all.

Re:Time-honored facts...

[bluethundr]

Again, they're just proving that the best security method is just to not let anyone on the system at all.

Very true! How can you 0wn a box that...isn't there! I saw this interesting report on 60 minutes (an abbreviated version of it can be found here, and the full story I beleive can be found here, but for a fee to Big Bill) a number of months ago showing this interesting photo of the Korean peninsula. It kind of reminds you of the hoax photo of the 2003 blackout, except that I suspect the Korean photo to be legit. Assuming it it is, maybe NK should start thinking about how to get power to most of their city (I could be mistaken, but I think Pyonyang is their only city and even THAT was just built "for show") and towns before they start getting their boxes online to trade e-mail!

But setting up a "secure e-mail" system for boxes that don't exist is the same sort of logic you would expect from a country that has traffic cops in the heart of their city directing traffic...that ISN'T THERE! It's an absouletly amazing society. Crazy. Loopy. But fascinating at the same time.

I saw that bit about the "traffic cop" in the same 60 minutes report and in it there was also someone from the state department claiming that at the time there was probably 5 machines on the Internet in the entire county!

Re:Time-honored facts...

[HeghmoH]

Perhaps if they would halt their nuclear weapons and long-range missile programs, the other nations of the world would consider the case in a more favorable light.

Re:Time-honored facts...

[davesag]

perhaps they are scared? i'm not saying North Korea is at all good, but you've got to see the broader context. The US screwed them with sanctions and overt/covert war. the USSR vanished along with all their oil imports, food imports, aid etc. the US has been threatening to nuke them, reneging on agreements to provide clean power etc. what else the hell would you expect them to do? don't believe most of what you read in the popular press.

Re:Time-honored facts...

[HeghmoH]

The US isn't simultaneously whining about getting handouts for electricity and food. North Korea is free to do whatever they want if they wish to remain completely isolated, but this thread was about them having no electricity. Because their Great Leader is so fucked up, and their economy is so fucked up, their only real chance for either enough food or enough electricity is outside help. And outside help will not be forthcoming until they abandon their nuclear weapons program and stop shooting missiles through the airspace of neighboring countries during tests.

Umm

[Anonymous Coward]

Secure email in a communist state?

DictatorMail.com ?

[grub]

How the system (likely) works:

The government assigns you a password.

You send email, people send you email.

You sleep well knowing that your email can only be read by the sender, recipient and.. that.. man.. with the rubber hose.

To me it sounds like Kim Jong Il is getting even more paranoid. He's wanting to control (and snoop) all email in within his borders for fear of net-savvy citizens daring to send subversive email. Pretty soon he'll probably start shooting people with glasses ("intellectuals") as Pol Pot did in Cambodia.

Hint to Kim Jong Il, try feeding your millions of starving children before promising them a corrupt email system few of them will ever live to see.

Re:DictatorMail.com ?

[KrispyKringle]

I think for the most part you are right, but I'm not convinced that this is just a move to be able to snoop on all e-mail. In communist countries like North Korea or Cuba, many services are provided by the government or by government subcontracters, as is the case in the States with public utilities. The reach, though, is far broader than of our public utilities, covering media like TV and radio, telecom and telephones, etc.

It may very well be that Kim Jonh Il feels that Internet access is critical to his nation's development (as many Americans feel about promoting third-world development in general--teach a man to fish versus simply giving a handout) and is trying to promote it through government sponsorship in the form familiar in his economy.

I'm not defending him, but there may very well be more here than you suggest.

Re:DictatorMail.com ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a regime that forces its athletes to shut curtains on their buses when traveling in foreign countries because they might have to bear the sight of all the unspeakable horrors in capitalist countries if those windows were open. Horrors like traffic, I guess.

At any rate, the last thing the North Korean government wants is an online citizenry.

This latest press release by the Japanese North Korean contingent is just more floundering of a sadly dying nation.

Re:DictatorMail.com ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hear in North Korea we have bit of Internet but it all controled by ruling party. We had to use anonymus proxy to use internet without ruling party seeing what we look at and say. Kim Jung-Il is terrible man and has no respect for tradition or North Korea people. He is sick but protected by army he made. sorry for my bad english.

Re:DictatorMail.com ?

[Alsee]

Horrors like traffic, I guess.

List of "unspeakable horrors" they must be protected from witnessing:
BMW's
Jordache jeans
Walkman radios
Fast food restaurants
Street lights
Public and residential telephones
Home electrictity
Indoor plumbing
Food

The sight of those items could be quite traumatic.

Unfortunately I'm not joking about anything on that list. I will address electricity and food in particular. Take a look at this NASA image: The Earth at night. It shows man-made light sources, effectively a combination of population density and development level. North Korea and South Korea have essentially identical enviornments, resources, and climate and similar population levels. North Korea is a black hole with an amazingly sharp line at the North/South border. No street lights, no electrictity, nothing.

North Korea has lost a signifigant fraction of it's population to starvation, roughly 1.7% of the population dying each year to starvation. That starvation is primarily because their economy is in shambles and they are diverting about 30% of their gross national product to supporting the worlds third-largest army. (China is #1 and U.S. is #2) Most countries only spend about 3% of their GNP supporting a military. That 30% level is crushing and leaves no money for roads, farming equipment, or even food.

North Korea is in the depths of paranoid isolation. They believe they need that army to prevent imminent invasion. They have stated their desire to use that army to "liberate" South Korea. Considering the 1.7% yearly starvation rate and considering the satallite photo, somehow I don't quite think South Korea has any desire for that sort of "liberation".

-

Complete Privacy...

[DaRat]

Of course they can guarantee complete privacy: after the security forces pick up the sender and the recipient and disappear them forever, no one will ever know what was written in the email.

Re:Complete Privacy...

[dagg]

How many Internet users, or even how many computer users there are in North Korea, remains unknown, although an Associated Press wire agency report on the email service said that few are believed to have any access. Leader Kim Jong II is known to be online, and has repeatedly mentioned the importance of computer technology.

There is complete privacy because Leader Kim Jong II is the only one allowed online.

Re:Complete Privacy...

[ErikTheRed]

after the security forces pick up the sender and the recipient and disappear them forever

If only we can get spammers in on this....

Off Black list? Nope...

[RedHat Rocky]

If this is North Korea's attempt to get off my black list, it's a failure.

Is that where the Iraqi information minister ended up? :)

Re:Off Black list? Nope...

[KrispyKringle]

South Korea is probably who you're thinking of. I've never seen North Korean spam. As the article points out, most North Koreans probably don't own computers.

North Korean Insanity

[siskbc]

To me it sounds like Kim Jong Il is getting even more paranoid.

You think that's a little loopy? Check out Kim's official policy on triplets.

Yeah, he's nuckin' futs.

Re:North Korean Insanity

[Crockerboy]

but if its on the innernet, it must be true!1!!12!

What about North Korean IM?

[stendec]

License2KimJongill: hi what's up
License2KimJongill: hello?
License2KimJongill: helloooo...

Bush43: SORRY CAN'T TALK RIGHT NOW
Bush43: GOT COLON POWELL ON THE PHONE

License2KimJongill: i'm pretty sure it's spelled colin
Bush43: WELL I'M PRETTY SURE YOUR NAME IS SPELLED KIM JUNGLE

License2KimJongill: shut up

Bush43: YOU SHUT UP

License2KimJongill: no you shut up

Bush43: MAKE ME

License2KimJongill: make me make you

Bush43: WHAT?

License2KimJongill: i have to go too, I have colin powell on the phone too. You're talking to "colon" powell so I bet you have the wrong guy

Bush43: SHUT UP

License2KimJongill: you shut up

Shamelessly stolen from the Kim Jong Il livejournal

Re:What about North Korean IM?

[roman_mir]

License2KimJongill: i have to go too, I have colin powell on the phone too. You're talking to "colon" powell so I bet you have the wrong guy - technically, he just had the wrong end of the guy.

The North Korean News Agency

[s20451]

http://www.kcna.co.jp

Pretty funny. A lot of stories like, "Ugandan ambassador hails Korean workers". Even some news in Spanish (I wonder if that's for Cuban benefit.)

And this means...

[KC7GR]

...that we're going to start seeing encrypted spam now?

(Sorry, couldn't resist). ;-)

Re:And this means...

[KrispyKringle]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that when you get mail from a `Korean' country code, the registry means South Korea. I, personally, can't remember ever seeing North Korean spam.

Dear N. Korean Secure E-mail System,

[mikesab]

*Salivates*

Your's Truly,
Every Known Hacker in the Free World

Hard to enforce..

[hookedup]

It remains illegal for any South Koreans to email their northern neighbours without government permission.

I wonder how strict they are about this? How could you possibly enforce a rule like this, considering the amount of wired households in S.K.

What if someone in N.K sends an email to an email on your mail server which doesn't exist, and your server happily sends out something along the lines of 'this address does not exist'. Are you liable then?

Re:Hard to enforce..

[tftp]

Well, the article says that they jailed six people recently for this offense. I would assume they don't watch everyone, but known activists can be easily monitored.

However this still does not tell me which of Koreas is more democratic. And this prohibition does not seem to be of any use whatsoever, unless South is paranoid about spies...

Re:Hard to enforce..

[RevMike]

this prohibition does not seem to be of any use whatsoever, unless South is paranoid about spies...

Indeed they are extremely concerned about spies and sabateurs (sp?). North Korea continues to be responsible for many provocative acts, including the murder of military personnel inside the the DMZ, the digging of invasion tunnels under the border, terrorist attacks in South Korea, etc.

The South has good reason to be paranoid.

Re:Hard to enforce..

[jedrek]

Well, North Korea is not democratic at ALL, so South Korea (where you have elections, protests, etc) is the more democratic.

As far as being paranoid, I think the South is quite paranoid and with good reason. North Korean spies reguarly travel into the south, through a large network of tunnels under the DMZ. NK agents have kidnapped Japanese and South Koreans dozens of times in the past 40 years. South Korea is often infiltrated by North Korean spies who get into the country via small submarines.

From what I understand, cold war Berlin was nothing compared to what's been going on in Korea since the 60s.

Spam

[mirko]

So, Kim doesn't know he's not the only one to get these "enlarge yer manhood" spams and wants to keep these secret from his court ?

of course

[theMerovingian]

Great Leader Kim Yong Il is computer-savvy. Check out the Frontpage-For-Dummies official site of the DPRK.

I would be embarrassed to put pictures of my CAT on a website that lame.

Re:of course

[kryptkpr]

And if you think that's funny.. check out their Flash Demo!

hahaha

[minus_273]

talk about liberal media! these are the top stories on the N Korean news site:

U.S. Urged to Accept Simultaneous Action and Package Solution
Abolition of SL in S. Korea Demanded
U.S. Imperialists' Aerial Espionage on DPRK
Japan Not Qualified to Participate in Six-way Talks
Meeting against Evil Laws Held in S. Korea
Yakbab, Korean Food

You know why its site is run from Japan right?

[sielwolf]

Because they can't risk having such a honeypot inside the DMZ (heh, check out how the computer argot just got completely flipped back upon itself). You don't want those loyal Party North Koreans (who would run such a service) allowing even the chance of Southern/US propaganda entering the North.

Better to isolate it outside and communicate with it securely. Would any self-respecting BOFH run his tyrannical regime er network any other way (bad haircut optioal)?

Also note that a segement of Korean-Japanese (who are descendent from the bad ol' days when the Penninsula was a colony) still see the North Korean regime as the One True way (so getting help to run Il-Jong's isn't too hard). Interesting article on the subject can be found in this JE. It's about an American's vacation into the North. Fascinating.

Definition of secure email...

[192939495969798999]

'the data in the email will be encrypted, so only someone that can hack our encryption method can read the text of your email.'
So, I could still harvest your address, right? It'd be pretty hard to encrypt email addresses while the messages are being delivered:
POST to 239frj349fu34nf3498f34nf9u834nf9834f....
nah, I don't think that will work.

This emails not fortunate

[RealProgrammer]

We are regretting that the Slash Dot web hosting has made these informations public available.

These informations should be kept private just for North Korean free viewing.

We have own all your bases.

What is legal in South Korea, and what isn't

[rduke15]

An interesting note at the bottom of the article says that "It remains illegal for any South Koreans to email their northern neighbors without government permission.".

That sounds actually pretty good for the North Koreans, when you consider the quantity of spam coming out of South Korea.

Too bad it isn't illegal to spam my country. Or has the spam I get been granted a "government permission"?

Here is how it works

[Snaller]

You print it out, put it in an envelope and deliver it in person (with an armed guard) - clever! Ping times are bad though.

Duuuuhhhhhh.

[GeneralEmergency]

No email -is- secure email.

Taa...dahh!

Fighting oppression

[mcSey921]

From the article: "It remains illegal for any South Koreans to email their northern neighbors without government permission. "

So South Korea is fighting the oppression and censorship of the North with oppression and censorship?

Re:Fighting oppression

[dochood]

It might be a little hard for Americans to understand this concept, since the Canadians don't have a 1 million man army sitting on the border, and SCUDs with chemical weapons on them, waiting for a chance to invade.

The Canadians don't send spies down to pick off our citizens and stir up our students into riots, etc.

The Canadians have not sent assassins to kill our president, submarines to drop off commandos to do who-knows-what, thugs to ax-murder people chopping down a tree, and they haven't bombed any of our airliners using 20 year old girls and 70 year old men.

Democracy, although we'd like to think so, doesn't export as well as Hollywood movies or blue jeans. Democracy is a pretty foreign concept to most parts of the world, and it takes time to build a solid, true democracy in any place that doesn't have the same foundation and culture that we have.

dochood

Re:Fighting oppression

[gilgongo]

If you're implying that America somehow exports democracy and social justice to the rest of world, would you care to explain how and to whom?

What about Cuba, or Nicaragua, for instance? What about Honduras? How about Haiti and Guatemala?

All those countries have experienced what you describe, and worse, against them and their national sovereignty. So if North Korea's doing it - they probably just see themselves as going with the flow!

I case you doubt what I say, lets take this little story about Nicaragua as an example:

20 years ago, Nicaragua was on the receiving end of covert operations, assassinations, funding of guerrilla groups and illegal importation of weapons, etc. all perpetrated by the United States. It was on the receiving end of what most people would call terrorism.

Nicaragua responded not by bombing Washington, but by taking it to the World Court, presenting a case for which they had no problem putting together evidence for.

The World Court accepted their case and ruled in their favour. It condemned what it called the 'unlawful use of force' (which basically means international terrorism) by the United States, and ordered the United States to terminate their aggression and to pay massive reparations.

The United States dismissed the court judgment and announced that it would henceforth not accept the jurisdiction of the court. So Nicaragua then went to the UN Security Council which considered a resolution calling on all states to observe international law. No one was mentioned but everyone understood who was being talked about. But the United States vetoed the resolution.

The US therefore now stands as the only state on record which has both been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law.

And you think North Korea is bad?

So - Nicaragua then went to the General Assembly where there is technically no veto but a negative US vote amounts to a veto. It passed a similar resolution with only the United States, Israel, and El Salvador opposed.

The following year they went to the General Assembly again, and this time the United States could only rally Israel to the cause, so two votes opposed to observing international law.

At that point, Nicaragua couldn't do anything lawful. It tried all the measures. They don't work in a world that is ruled by force.

So, um, how does the United States export democracy? How does it help to promote world peace exactly? And how much do you know about what the US government is doing overseas?

Clearly very little I think.

Re:Fighting oppression

[haxor.dk]

Hm. The same Nicaragua in where the Sardinistas ruled, slaughtering in tens of thousands? But now, they've been trown out - democratically - and suddently, mass graves start turning up.

But of course - because the USA intervened in the creation of a cute lil' socialist dictatorship, you have to bash them as un-democratic. Um, yeah.

Change of address notice

[mm0mm]

from NSA log...

North Korea has launched an email service that "guarantees the privacy of correspondence"

"Hi everyone. Since Hotmail is infamous for its backdoor and security holes, I'm switching my email. Please update your address book!

old address: KimJongIl@hotmail(REMOVE).com
new address: tyrant@hackers.no-korea(REMOVE).gov

Yours,
Kimmy"

Great Solution for their Problems

[fuzzybunny]

So, while the population is starving due to castrophic economic policies, corrupt leadership and an idiotic foreign policy, they will no longer have to play games with the rest of the world, trading nuclear weapons for food.

I'd love to have a look at what pops up in their mail logs:

From: Dear Leader (Kim.Jong-Il@securemail.gov.kp)
To: president@whitehouse.gov (George)
CC: vice-president@whitehouse.gov (Dick)
Date: Dec. 2, 2003 18:50
Subject: North Korea Secure Email!!!11
------------
Dear Capitalist stooge George:

Invincible North Korean Peoples' Electronic Industry allow secure email discourse with running-dog American lackey. Welcome to glorious socialist revolution communication network! Great Korean Peoples' Hacker Team crush you Network like grape. All you base are belong to us! Hahahaha!

Love,

-Dear Leader

From: Dear Leader (Kim.Jong-Il@securemail.gov.kp)
To: orders@pizzahut.com
Date: Dec. 2, 2003 18:53
Subject: our order
------------
We take 50,000,000 super-size meat-lover special. Hold anchovy. Deliver President Palace, Pyongyang, Illustrious Democratic Peoples Republic North Korea.

Regard,

-Dear Leader

PS: Send Britney.

From: Dear Leader (Kim.Jong-Il@securemail.gov.kp)
To: tracy1827@hotmail.com (Peter Green Kabila
Date: Dec. 2, 2003 18:58
Subject: Re: YOUR STRICT CONFIDENCE REQUESTE
------------
Dear Mr. Kabila
Great Democratic People Republic of North Korea very interest in confidential transact. Please send more info.

Regard,

-Dear Leader

From: Dear Leader (Kim.Jong-Il@securemail.gov.kp)
To: president@whitehouse.gov
Date: Dec. 2, 2003 19:05
Subject: You Warheads

------------
Dear Ali,
Yuo nuklear weapon warhead ready. Freighter leave for Pakistan tomorrow. Please expediting payment expeditiously.

Cheers,

-Dear Leader
^D^C^C^C cancel
To: ali@alqaida.org
SHIT WRONG ADDRESSING

Should have just bought PGP-Universal

[Nonesuch]

All that work, and they could have just installed one of these on the DMZ and been done with it.

PGP.Com products are notoriously overpriced, but I bet North Korea could negotiate a nice discount on a 22,000,000 seat license with A.T.M. Networks Inc, the South Korean sales agent...

One hitch -- I tried completing the "free download" form with "N.Korea" as the country code, and got this popup:

'In accordance with current US Export restrictions, PGP 8.0 products may be downloaded by individuals throughout the world except those in the following countries: Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. If you are in one of these countries, you may not download PGP software'."

Ah well, GPG doesn't have these petty restrictions!

I hope South Korea is secure

[AndroidCat]

A year ago or more, I received a "Meet Russian Vommin" spam -- relayed by an open proxy on the firewall box of the South Korea naval headquarters. It took days to find a working Korean abuse mailbox to report this to.

Hopefully they've improved things since then.

North Korea Secure Email (Long Version News)

[Rotten]

Today the details of a new mail system claimed as "Absolutely Secure" have been posted on Leader Kim Jong II weblog available at the same server where the new mail system is being implemented.

An undisclosed person who likes himself to be called JK2 reported that "today i read my...err his weblog, and i got the details nobody knows about the new system"

Analysts said the new method is "Brillant" to bring email access to ppl while keeping comunications secure.

The system, concived by Kim Jong II himself consists in his own computer acting as a server, umplugged from any network or communications device. The gracefull leader himself will answer phonecalls from the population and transcribe the messages for them, absolutely free of charge.
The message is then keept in JK II "secure server" waiting for the recipient of the message to call using the toll free number and again, Kim Jong II himself will read the message for them.

The system is absolutely safe from net crackers and identity stealing since only Kim Jong II family have access to telephone services.

As stated by our misterious "JK2" source, many "free world" leaders have expressed interest in the new system including Chinese and Cuban leaders.

By yesterday, a very powerfull american software industry leader was analyzing in a emergency meeting held at company headquearters located in Redmond, the possibility to claim a patent on this great mail system while spokesman of a company who wanted to stay anonymous said that system is sure to use portions of intelectual property that belong to them, and they are analyzing charging Kim Jong II family a $600 license to use the system.

I'm a pure home grown Korean...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and this scares me. Although I spent most of my teen age years + university life over in Canada, I've lived in Korea for good 14 years. As I grew up, there are bad and goodo things to be heard about people "up" there. One thing, I heard was the rumour that researches results achieved by North Korean top university happens to be better than the best university in South. I've also heard about the top University in North actually does have a better ranking (think North American university rankings published annually) than the top university in South. Now, these are my conspiracy theories about why the posted story is a possible scenario. 1) North Korea maybe forging research result. BUT they do not seem to joke about Nuclear bombs :-) I think they do have potential to acquire "bleeding-edge" cryptography, but probably will take a while to mature. 2) ONLY a few selected children of high ranking government officials get educated. And I assume these are very smart people since the government in places like North Korea wouldn't waste money. 3) There have been spies from North in South. (duh!) BUT some of these spies lived their lives as a professor/researcher at some university, etc etc. (this is TRUE, scary) What else could have they been doing? 4) North Korea will likely disobey any laws about cryptography exports and so on. The algorithm and all the math required are published. I assume using/implementing them just requires one smart brain. :-) I guess this point essentially applies to terrorists as well. 5) Don't forget all that money South gave to North a few years ago. Sure, it wouldn't have been enough money to last for long, but it was cerntainly known that a) North Korea didn't spend money for the public b) The amount of "financial aid" given to North was enough to make South Korean money reservoir dry. People actually blame the _previous_ president for this. 6) The site is hosted in _Japan_ *gasp*. Believe it or not, Japanese always seem to win computer hackerish war over Koreans. For my short period of exposure to Open Source/BSD community tells me that Japanese are faaar deeper into hacker community then Koreans. What doees this mean? I'm probably about to say, North Korean could've got some Japanese hackers working secretly? One interesting note though. I believe North Koreans have their webpages too (for probably 3 years?). It's been a while since I heard of debates in Korea about "Hmm. Should we allow our South dudes to see these North Korean webpages?" I think the resolution was to require government permission to access those pages. SOrry about long conspiracy theory. :-) And I'll post anonymously because I don't want to get arrested!

What's next?

[scubacuda]

Nigeria offering "secure banking"?

Crap source

[Any Web Loco]

Dude, this is based on a report by the Herald Sun for chrissakes! The Herald Sun is a zero-cred newspaper - it's the kinda paper tat has "B-52 Bomber found on Moon" as a headline (actually it didn't, but it's STILL that kind of paper).

Moderation crack

[Enoch Root]

Thank you moderators for showing how little you know of the world outside your basement bedroom. If you really think a North Korean could get on the Internet and write the above post, I have a bridge for sale.