S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers

maggeth writes "The Financial Times is reporting that North Korea's military and intel services have trained as many as 600 computer hackers specifically for attacks against South Korea, Japan, and the US. South Korea claims that the north has a five-year university program for hacker training and cites recent attacks on government computer systems. The South Korean defense ministry claimed in the report that 'North Korea's intelligence warfare capability is estimated to have reached the level of advanced countries,' and that the caliber of the North's hackers is high. So far it appears that these specific attacks are based in China, although it is not clear if North Korea is using Chinese networks or if China is involved."

Comments

If true, the stakes are now higher.

[mind21_98]

I seem to think N. Korea's using this as a tool to gain leverage in talks. Then again, if they do have six hundred trained people ready to conduct cyberwarfare and have no qualms doing it, we could very well be screwed. In any case, it's probably not in their best interest to go through with it.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

North korea may have 600 highly trained crackers, but we have slashdot, and the power of FIFTY THOUSAND CLICKS per link. If that can't bring an entire country down within a few days, nothing will.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[mirko]

This report could also come from Microsoft public relation who' claim it's not their products which are not sure but rather some malicious hackers trained to break into them...

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[killapenguin]

Why wouldn't they go through with an attack? A cyber-attack has the benefits of causing no bloodshed but could potentially cause anything from a minor headache to millions (if not billions) of dollars in damages if launched properly.

Also, it's pretty interesting that the attacks on S. Korean computer systems seemed to be based in China. If this were indeed true (doubtful), this would cast doubt on dubbya's assertion in the debate that bilateral talks with N. Korea will alienate China, which is supposedly imposing some kind of leverage on N. Korea.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[jginspace]

In any case, it's probably not in their best interest to go through with it.

Yes. I'm in Vietnam and the quality of their comrades here is nothing to be frightened of.

Key word is "trained". Trained by whom? You're not going to learn much when you don't have the equipment, you're hungry, and you have to spend six hours a day in political indoctrination classes.

Anyone with talent *and* internet access will be busy looking over their shoulders because they'll naturally be on the "highly susupicious" list at the Ministry of Culture. And they'll want to devote at least of few hours' worth of that talent to making some extra cash to make sure their families can put an extra cabbage in the pot.

Then remember it'll be easy to know which direction to look for these hackers. The only place a North Korean hacker is not going to stick out, or the only place he can afford to live, is China.

This article is just trying to scare us. They had nothing better to write about. Nothing to worry about; nothing to see here.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[fymidos]

something doesn't seem right, a hackers university? i mean how would the computer labs ever work there ???

"nearly 300 South Korean government computers ... were infected with viruses capable of stealing passwords and other sensitive information."

really? millions of computers are infected with viruses worldwide, all i see from this is a lack of south korea administrators. It's obvious that in a country where every house has broadband the levels of virus infections would be higher than the rest of the world.

A good strategy for south korea would be to actually educate its people on the use and the dangers of internet.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[zhenlin]

Not quite the article, but perhaps North Korea itself is using this as a FUD tool. I saw it yesterday on NHK news, so it should be an official statement from South Korea...

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[maxwell demon]

A good strategy for south korea would be to actually educate its people on the use and the dangers of internet.

Maybe this is the true aim. You know, people are morer willing to learn about and take security measures if there's some concrete threat, at best from a "known evil". A general "it's dangerous in the woods" is far less likely to be successful than "in the woods there are wild animals which will kill you", let alone "you know, in the woods there's that wulf which already has killed someone, and there's a whole pack of other wolves as well"

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the quality of the nuclear scientists from the DPRK that you see in Vietnam?

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an easy solution, don't put secure data onto a computer that's connected to the internet. Thanks for your consultation Federal Government, that'll be 5 million dollars please.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[DenDave]

I don't think that you should underestimate the problem, granted most of don't run a major risk but they do try, and as you will acknowledge, trying leads to learning...

Actually the amount of entries in my LogWatch with failed attempts coming from korea (south) and China (commie) is sort of up and down but there are more and more of them that try.. It seems that they like to attack the mailservers.. luckily they ain't too bright, yet....

Just TCPwrap their netblocks away.. I don't know anyone out there anyway that would be interesting or interested with regards to my online activities.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[yiantsbro]

What I just don't understand is how they found 600 Georgians willing to train with them...

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Lost Penguin]

Is that any worse than DieBold running the elections?
After all how will we know just how badly the election is going to be slanted towards the Republican party.

I can see it now:

Yes, we have one vote in one town for Kerry; my bad, there was no vote there......

Exactly like the SNL skit about the Sadam election in Iraq.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[jlar]

"I don't think that you should underestimate the problem, granted most of don't run a major risk but they do try, and as you will acknowledge, trying leads to learning..."

I agree. We should remember that North Korea channels most of its funds to the military - and that in spite of the poverty it has already developed ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Riktov]

Anyone with talent *and* internet access will be busy looking over their shoulders because they'll naturally be on the "highly susupicious" list at the Ministry of Culture

In the DRPK annyone with internet access at all is already part of the state's techno elite and de facto an agent.

The only place a North Korean hacker is not going to stick out, or the only place he can afford to live, is China.

Why not South Korea or Japan? And goverment agents can probably afford to live anywhere.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[FlopEJoe]

"benefits of causing no bloodshed"

Maybe not directly as in bombing or shooting people. But computers are at the heart of a lot of things that have lives on the line. I realize there's massive backup systems but lives could be lost if something goes wrong with: air traffic control, hospitals, emergency response, or military weapons. Financial lives could be ruined if banks, investment, or pension instatutions were attacked. And what about our dependence on power and comm? If a grid or communication system could be hacked in a large enough area, people could go without food, water, medicine, etc.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[stephanruby]

"...we could very well be screwed."

And how can we be screwed? Pray tell. Do those hackers have magical powers or something? Do you think they can take out the internet permanently with clever VB viruses? Or DOS attacks? Do you think that those hackers can social engineer their way into getting US government/corporate passwords/manuals?

I doubt it. Any attack they make will only make the internet stronger and more resilient. Besides, it's the virus of the mind N Korea should be worrying about. Just you wait until those hackers get infected with Slashdot and Searchlores. Those hackers are probably the sons and daughters of the elite in their government. This elite will regret exposing their kids to so much foreign information.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[mirko]

600 crackers for almost 23 million persons ?
I understand why they say they are starving !

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[nickol]

> The only place a North Korean hacker is not going to stick out, or the only place he can afford to live, is China.

Well, I do not want to inflate the hype, just to share information. Russia. I can see North Koreans sometimes - it is easy to distinguish them by pins with Kim Chen Ihr portraits. Russia HAS Internet access, and those filters, if exist, are working BACKWARD. Not like China.

Also we have some high quality hackers here, good general IT infrastructure and, everywhere except Moscow, cheap life.

However, I do not think that those hackers are a big threat. There are many hackers already in the world, much more than those 600. To be true, much more than even 6000. But the Internet is still here.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

it's pretty interesting that the attacks on S. Korean computer systems seemed to be based in China. If this were indeed true (doubtful), this would cast doubt on dubbya's assertion in the debate that bilateral talks with N. Korea will alienate China

Doubts on dubbya's assertions??? Oh, the irony....

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[museumpeace]

depends on where the routers are. we could DOS some innocent bystanders in the process.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[torpor]

Whatever. You know *nothing* about North Korea that your trusty media hasn't relayed to you.

"Leverage in talks", eh? What talks would those be, and what are they over, specifically?

Lets just ask this question: whats the difference between "600 'lite crackers of the Motherland" and "15,000 CISCO-School graduates"? Not much.

Nice fall though, for the propaganda I mean ..

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[jginspace]

In the DRPK annyone with internet access at all is already part of the state's techno elite and de facto an agent.

Will have connections, yes. The thing to remember is that these regimes spy on, and distrust, their own much more than the populace in general.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

On a serious note, this story does help explain why they are doing so poorly. The government seems like it is being run by a 12 year old boy who is experiencing testosterone for the first time. All they do is stupid things like this. Building bombs, training hackers. It is all just a bunch of non-practical wastes of money.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

Russia HAS Internet access, and those filters, if exist, are working BACKWARD.

In Soviet Russia..?

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[chrish]

Unfortunately, they've only been able to buy six Internet-able computers and three acoustic-coupler modems due to Kim Jong-Il's awesome management skills.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[DarkSarin]

I'm not sure I follow your logic. How does that mean that China is not imposing some type of leverage on N. Korea? I would see just the opposite, to be honest. Could you elucidate please?

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[antifoidulus]

Heh, well it depends on how they do this. Remember, they do have some talented physicists and engineers probably capable of building a nuclear bomb. That knowledge had to come from somewhere outside of what the good Dr. Khan sold them.
They could be stupid and just send the party elite's children to this school because they found a virus on the internet and modded it to set the background of every computer to the picture of Kim Il Sung. OR they could have found students that were adept in math and languages and trained them to go to a university overseas(in China, Japan, South Korea, or the US) using fradulent passports etc. Remember, they did kidnap some Japanese people so they could learn their language, customs, etc. So it's very posible that right now there are North Korean spies studying at MIT, Shanghai University, Tokyo University, and the Seoul Institute of Technology(I'm not sure that all these places exist, but you get my point)
Hard to say with Mr. Il, he can be brilliant at some points, and incredibly stupid at others....

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[glesga_kiss]

North korea may have 600 highly trained crackers

So? I'm sure the NSA and GCHQ have their own highly trained crackers. What exactly is the point of this article? It kinda points out the obvious, something that has been true for many years. Electronic warfare has existed since the invention of the radio jammer. The extension to this onto the net is inevitable.

The question is, should we invade? Do the have any oil?

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Begossi]

600 crackers.. I wonder how much Space Shuttle Fuel Tanks worth of destruction that means, in a yards/foreweek scale.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

> What pisses me off, is that these crackers could wire US money for the main purpose of Kim and his harem. The moment he fucks with the US, I say we glass that country to a shiny spot seen from space.

And this from somebody who forwards his domain to Microsoft. Oh glory!

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, it's pretty interesting that the attacks on S. Korean computer systems seemed to be based in China. If this were indeed true (doubtful), this would cast doubt on dubbya's assertion in the debate that bilateral talks with N. Korea will alienate China, which is supposedly imposing some kind of leverage on N. Korea.

Good operative word "seemed". It is more likely - or at least to some degree that China is blamed for more that it actually does. Their biggest crime is putting unpatched systems on the net, then someone from the US hacks them and then uses them as a spam source.

Hackers rarely if ever will use their own IP address directly and will prefer methods of proxy to hide the source. North Korea also has lots of poorly setup systems needing patching.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[RamboCalrissian]

I've got a solution, let's just send 600 copies of StarCraft to N. Korea, it'll keep them occupied for a while, and then we don't have to worry about a thing.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[darkmeridian]

The North Koreans have great leverage using this as a threat. Our computer systems are vulnerable, as the US government found out during "Eligible Receiver". Yes, there are some sites saying that this was misreported or overreported, but the bottom line is that we are vulnerable to computer terrorism. And it could be more dangerous when combined with a real state like North Korea. Imagine if they invade South Korea right after they pull the plug on internal American communications.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cybe rwar/warnings/

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Ziak]

As for not putting secure data onto a computer thats connected to the internet, I don't belive they would do it, I know the US goverment puts it on a SIPRnet and as TSiprnet, The SIPRnet you need a Secret clearance, and the TSiprnet you need a Top Secret clearance, both unless your a born U.S. Citzen you can not obtain... and getting the T/S clearance requires a hefty investagation to get it I belive the cost is about $5,000 for it to be done, and this has to be done every 5 years or the clearance drops to a Secret Clearance that then degrades again to nothing after another 5 years. With that being said the computers are stored in Vaults and the lines are encrypted, along with them being in lockboxs where the lines are, now if where doing all of this you don't think the S. Koreans would atleast do some of it?

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[EinarH]

If you ask me this claim about "North Korea has trained 600 EVIL AND SKILLED HACKERS OMG RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! is in the same category as the infamous story about How Saddam has bought 4000 new Playstations so his scientists can construct the MEGA BOMB*.

Both stories are guaranteed to go all the way around the world becauase of their newsworthiness. They are both impossible to verify. Both caters to technology fear and fears about "what will the dangerous future bring".
So I belive that both stories are propaganda. Where the propaganda comes from is another question.

And I somewhat doubt that North Korea could afford much of that Cisco stuff they would need to do some serious damage.

*What happened to that story anyway?
Thay didn't find stacks of Playstations in Iraq that's for sure.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[joshmccormack]

One of the major expenses the N. Korean gov. has is supporting it's military - 3rd largest standing army in the world, and they're actively building/developing weapons, such as nuclear missiles. It's not that the whole country is poor and so people are starving. The country is starving b/c huge amounts of money are poured into the military.

And don't think that N. Korean agents just hang out there. They spread out. N. Korea has been known to kidnap foreign nationals (Japanese, for instance) to train their agents to mix in in other countries, and they periodically get caught, at least in S. Korea.

And just in case you think N. Korea is an ok place that just has a different philosophy, read up a little on the extermination and enslavement. Did you know N. Korea was at one time one of the most fertile grounds for Christian missionaries? Know how many Christians there are in N. Korea now? And they didn't move away when it was made clear they weren't wanted.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[geigertube]

And everyone else has to use pocket calculators and squeak toys.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

That wasn't has assertion in the debate. His assertion was that if other countries werent involved then north korea wouldnt feel as much pressure. If they walk out on us they could care less(as they have many times in the past, which was the problem he was stating with bilateral talks), but if they walk out on china...thats a different story.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia..?

...internet filters you?

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[negro]

Great, keep on underestimating everybody. Then don't complain if in a few years you get bitten in the ass by these guys.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[killjoe]

"*What happened to that story anyway? "

It went down the black hole of stories that never get followed up on. Other ones there include.

The Israeli spy at the defense dept.
Ahmed Chalabi is going to be tried for forgery in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's trial.
Jose Padilla.
The crashed egyptian airliner
People being warned about 9/11 before it happened.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[the_mad_poster]

Well, thank you Captain Obvious. I can't understand why the CIA doesn't just break down your door right now and drag you off to their secret training facilities, given your amazing abilities. I can't believe somebody actually found that Interesting. I think maybe they were looking for the "-1, Well Duh" moderation and clicked it by mistake.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Lestat_79]

Damn right. They'd better go watch the americans and see how the big boys play it. Now there's some money wasting! Training hackers...tsj... that's a spare time activity.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[the_mad_poster]

That's because your brain is roughly the size of a withered peanut.

You should probably consider running for president.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[jotok]

Er, no.

To defend against information warfare is not to conduct an offensive of your own. Rather, you need to secure your own infrastructure, which is not happening.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[johnnyb]

Others:

* The fate of TWA Flight 800 (John Kerry and George Stephanopolous both refer to it as a terrorist attack)
* What was Iraq's role in the OKC bombing (training Nichols and providing assistance for carrying out the attack)
* The fate of AA 587 (The Canadian Post names the person who blew it up)
* Is West Nile Virus a virus developed by Saddam Hussein?
* What is the relationship between Libya and Iraq (many think Iraq's scientists were the ones working on Libya's nukes, using equipment from N. Korea)

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Seanasy]

You forgot:

* Faked moon landing
* Alien space ship captured at Area 51
* Black helicopters dusting mind control agents
* Satellites beaming pornography directly into the heads of Christian children

Those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. :P

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[d_jedi]

Because the US could take the attack as a declaration of war and bomb the @#() out of North Korea.

If Bush gets re-elected, I don't doubt it.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Bull999999]

* Satellites beaming pornography directly into the heads of Christian children

I have a sudden urge to become a Christian child.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[glesga_kiss]

Er, yes.

They have had systems such as Echelon for years without the publics knowledge. Are you seriously telling me you don't believe that NSA has any interest in getting electronic inteligence from hacked computers? Not even from (shudder) terrorists?

I'd bet all my money that they already have a version of BackOrifice of their own, active and deployed right now.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[danielobvt]

You don't actually have a clearance do you? Because there are enough errors in your statements that I almost thought for a second that you were trying to drop misinformation out there. From the silly comment about a clearance "degrading" to who can get clearances (hint, I know a number of non-native born American citizens who hold various clearances) to the route that classified data can take when being transferred between machines (hint, there have been some innovations in the past few years that make your statements incorrect).

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know I'm going to Sunday School this weekend!

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[jotok]

Wow, congratulations on not making it past the first line of my reply!

What I was saying wasn't that NSA doesn't have hackers (which nobody can confirm nor deny, so you may actually have a good shot at losing "all your money" on that bet). Rather, the original post pointed out that we have hackers of our own, so North Korea having them is not a big deal. This is incorrect. We could have zero hackers of our own and this would not be a big deal if we were hard at work securing our own networks. Unfortunately, security professionals have to deal with IT professionals who, like yourself, are poorly informed (I won't go so far as to say clueless) as to what's really going on...so the work is not getting done.

That is why this is a big deal.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Ziak]

i actually hace a secret clearance and for the miltary which I'm curentally in you CAN NOT have a clearance if your not a natrual citizen

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[docbombay]

The government seems like it is being run by a 12 year old boy who is experiencing testosterone for the first time.

This would also explain all the e-mail I get from the .kp domain promising "VIAGR4 FOR CHEAP!!!11"

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[danielobvt]

natrual citizen
by this I take it from this and your previous comment to mean "Born and raised American", which is completely incorrect in terms of security clearances (I have clearances with State and DOD), since I know people who have various level clearances who were born in another country (for example one I know was born and raised in Vietnam for 10 years, and for the past 12 has been a US Citizen. He currently holds a DOD Secret clearance). If you look at the DOD adjucation guidelines for clearances, as long as you can prove to their satisfaction that you have no foreign influences on your decisions, you can be granted one. Perhaps its slightly different for the uniformed services (though I am completely sure it is not, as I know several former foreign nationals who became US Citizens and joined various services as an officer (which for all the ways of getting comissioned that I know of, requires a minimum of a Secret to complete the process)).

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

1 fibreoptic line to Asia + 1 pair of scissors = Problem solved... =o)

Computer sheep are far less dangerous than you think. With or without paperwork that says their sheep.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[kosty]

I think the fact that the steaks are higher shows that we're moving in a positive direction. Now if we can just make that damn pie higher so I can keep putting food on my family...

For those who laughed last [e.g.: didn't get it...]:

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."--Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

"We ought to make the pie higher."--South Carolina Republican Debate, Feb. 15, 2000

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[DigiShaman]

I would rather have a brain the size of a withered peanut then no functional brain at all. I mean, what does it do for you if your already dead?

I may be a heartless bastard, but I do believe in survival. After all, the Human race is still part of the animal kingdom. It's just that some are more socially civilized depending on whom you talk to. ;)

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[kosty]

For those who laughed last [e.g.: didn't get it...]:

Damn I love trying too hard to be clever while making the "I.e." v. "E.g." screw-up...

[Head firmly implanted in own ass...].

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bet all my money that they already have a version of BackOrifice of their own, active and deployed right now.

Anyone with even the slightest bit of programming skill can sit down with a RAD language like Delphi or Visual Basic and throw together a Back Orifice clone in less than a half an hour. It is really really easy.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[sglane81]

Do you think they can take out the internet permanently with clever VB viruses? Or DOS attacks?

They won't take the internet down permenantly, but they could find new holes (like the recent BGP) to exploit in critical tech hubs. It may be possible to shut down trunks of the net effectivly stopping communications in certain parts. Phone networks and the power grids could also cause lots of problems when shut down. Those are connected as well. If I were N. Korea and I was about to launch a massive attack, I would blind the U.S. first by crippling the phone networks like what happened in 1989(?) allegedly by MoD/LoD.

Do you think that those hackers can social engineer their way into getting US government/corporate passwords/manuals?

Maybe not social engineer, but people crack into sensitive government databases numerous times a day although they won't admit it.

There is no such thing as perfect security. All you can do to protect yourself is not make yourself low hanging fruit.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[gad_zuki!]

>And they didn't move away when it was made clear they weren't wanted.

All missionaries know their work is dangerous, afterall they are saying "you primitives are nothing compared to our culture, especially our Jesus." I can't decide who's worse, a bunch of highly ideological religious nuts whose ultimate aim is theocracy or a bunch of communist nuts whose ultimate aim is facism. I'm opting out of both, thank you very much.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure how relevant this is but I had to reply to the ignorance of the parent post. Sorry, I'm in Viet Nam too (Ho Chi Minh), have been for nine years, and I don't hear of many people doing six hours reeducation every day. Corrupt you can argue it may be (salaries and - lack of - pensions tend to do that in developing nations, old style soviet it ain't (any more). There are plenty of young people here with a strong grasp of computing, most literature vis a vis computing is available, and hundreds of computing schools are available, some with excellent teachers trained in the west. I know several linux gurus here who would put most of my colleagues in London or west coast US to shame.

Mike

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Altizar]

So you are saying that there is a difference between a highly trained hacker and a hightly trained security professional?
The only way that you can stay ahead of your enimies offensive power is to create that power for your self, then find a way to defeat it.
The NSA most likely has teams of highly skilled hackers, but they would not be stupid enough to use such a loaded term.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[dcam]

I can't decide who's worse, a bunch of highly ideological religious nuts whose ultimate aim is theocracy

That is not neccesarily the aim of missionaries. People can be Christians and believe in the separation of church and state.

a bunch of communist nuts whose ultimate aim is facism

Sounds like a strange group of communists.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[jotok]

So you are saying that there is a difference between a highly trained hacker and a hightly trained security professional?

What? No! Are you guys even reading past the first line?

Look, the bottomline is that if you want to survive a gunshot, you wear a bulletproof vest. Carrying a gun yourself does nothing.

Yeah, using guns to learn about ballistics and penetration is good, but in the end, an offensive weapon does not help your defense.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[the_mad_poster]

Do you also carry a shotgun with you in your car so that you can shoot the driver of any vehicle that appears as though it may come within an unsafe distance of your vehicle?

I'll bet you like Bush. Point the gun and pull the trigger. No thought required! Of course, it's funny how that can cause a lot more problems for you than it solves... isn't it?

It's not a matter of being civilized, it's a matter of being smart enough to know when you should use force and when using force will cause bigger problems than it solves. After that, it's being smart enough to use force wisely and not just go blundering forward like a mentally retarded caveman who just discovered the first club.

We could solve a lot of problems just shooting all of our real and perceived enemies dead, but just remember, somebody out there can say that about you, whether it's justified or not, and as long as they have the bigger gun, it doesn't matter if using it is right when you take that philosophy.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[glesga_kiss]

have to deal with IT professionals who, like yourself, are poorly informed (I won't go so far as to say clueless) as to what's really going on

Methinks you are the one who is clueless. The NSA is one of the most aggressive security agencies in the world. I'm sure their own private networks are very secure and not connected to the public internet in any way. It is common practice in these kind of places for people with clearance to have two PCs on their desk, one for each network.

Remember, we are talking about the country that trained just about every prominent South American terrorist as well as the likes of Al-Qaida. I hardly think having a few "security personel" (i.e. hackers) who's remit is not to defend, but consider attacks, is beyond their capability. The NSA already has all the cool toys for listening into telephones, cellphones, radios, faxes. You think they may have forgotten about TCP/IP?

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[joshmccormack]

You misread what I wrote. I wasn't referring to missionaries being killed, I was talking about Christians. And I said nothing about them wanting a theocracy.

Christian missionaries certainly do not tell people their culture is primitive compared to theirs and that Jesus, Coca-cola and Hollywood are the answers to feeding their children and stopping wars or something.

I think you have a very biased view against Christians and missionaries, and are not focusing on the subject - N. Korea's ill treatment of people they don't like.

And choose to not believe in whatever you like, but don't forget that your faith is somewhere, so just be aware of where it is and make it a conscious decision.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[DigiShaman]

Are your serious? Good God, man! Take a look at the current events in N. Korea. Kim is fucking insane!

It's only a matter of time before they start exporting plutonium to make some major cash off the black market. I doubt N. Korea would be that stupid to use the stuff themselves. But they have brainwashed most if not all of N. Koreans that America is evil and they will rule S. Korea through the bullshit of "reunification" retoric.

Please don't tell me you trust them. And with artilary pointed right at Seoul, all it takes is Kim to give the "go ahead" and wipe out that city in a few hours. In other words, N. Korea is holding S. Korea hostage. So we really have no choice but to invoke a first-strike policy once we have real information that they are infact a clear and present danger.

To be honest, I think we will end up dropping a few nukes on N. Korea. But when that happens, there be more then just nuclear fallout. If anything, it will be the political fallout that'll be the bitch.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[the_mad_poster]

You're either a troll or stupendously ignorant... I haven't figured out which one yet.

Kimmy Chimmy Chonga is CRAZY, not STUPID. There's a difference. He's not going to risk losing his comfortable little throne by starting a full scale war because no matter how much damage he could do, there's no way he could win. However, he's well aware that he can use the presence of nukes, or at least the perception of the presence of nukes, as extra leverage at the bargaining table.

I was going to say it was a good thing psychotic people like you don't get into office... but then I remembered Bush and Cheney... my bad.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[DigiShaman]

Your so blind with rage and hatred is has become a poison to you. At least I'm being realistic regardless of the fact I'm cold blooded. If you want to wait around and see if he strikes first, then be my guest. At least I will still be around to procreate thanks to my inherent intellect of survival. And politics mean nothing to mean at the end of the day. What matters is the Law of nature.

If someone wishes to point a gun at me, you had better well fucking pull the trigger. If not, YOU WILL DIE! This is binary to me. Black/white, Yes/No. If a nation ever threatens my life, than fuck'em. Seriously, FUCK THEM!! I don't give a god damn rats-ass bleeding-heart. I WILL SURVIVE! ...are you feeling angry, maybe even a little sad? Where here is a clue for ya. Why do you even think you are even alive and intelligent? Hint: your ancestors had to have been very cautious and vigilant to maintain your bloodline. And even when you don't think so, your actions may cause an effect at someone else's expense.

Humanity; love it or hate it. We are who we are. Do not deny your lineage...for your very survival may depend upon it.

On a lighter note, I'm optimistic about humanity. But don't ever be blind to the fact we have strings attached to our behavior (some would say we are just the total sum of our genetics, and thus freewill is just an illusion. Not me however).

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[the_mad_poster]

Or insane... you could well be that as well...

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fool. The Peoples' Republic of North Korea is a capable military entity. Direct defense including physical and electronic means is amazingly effective.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

South Korea has started training cookies to counter the NK threat.

Re:In other news...

[essreenim]

Yeah, I knew I should have studied in North Korea.
Forget binary trees and linked lists. Lets get straight to studying MS buffer overload vulnerabilities and haxor tactics...

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

"ANY Western country could kick serious ass in Afghanistan, Iraq or North Korea ..."

Obviously, you're not familiar with the Korean or Vietnam wars.

Re:In other news...

[Echnin]

I think the US would not succeed in a land war in North Korea. A major reason they have so many poor is that military spending is so high; 33.9% of GDP. This is over 10 times as much as the US. Of course, considering their GDP is about 1000th of what the US GDP, this may not seem like a huge amount. But it still remains a fact that North Korea has the fourth largest army in the world, with 1.2 million men. The US has 1.4 million. They have a bit of outdated equipment, but they have plenty of fully-working tanks, artillery and APCs. You think the US stands a chance in a land war? You already lost to them once.

But the real question is, why would the US want to invade North Korea? They are showing signs of accepting a free market economy -- some areas have been designated as special free market zones, and this may spread throughout the rest of the country. Sure, they're far behind, but they can drag themselves out of this mess.

Re:In other news...

[elodan]

How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals? One word. Vietnam.

And North Korea have nukes, btw. That makes them dangerous if nothing else does.

Re:In other news...

[imsabbel]

About soldiers with ak47 and sandals...

You realize that given 1 million $, north korea can outfit and train and feed about 1000 soldiers.

America can buy 3 smart bombs or 0.3 cruise missiles....
Which would be more dangerous in a invasion with possible city/geruillia fights?

Re:In other news...

[infolib]

How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?

Uhh.. I don't know - ask a Vietnam vet perhaps?

Re:In other news...

[retards]

That (Vietnam) war ended almost 30 years ago and Korea even earlier than that. They were fought against countries that had a lot more backing than North Korea, Iraq or Afghanistan. Also, America suffered from incredible protest at home during Vietnam.

If you have any experience with modern weapons, you would know that war with the West is ultimately futile, unless you can create political division on the home front. Dumbfire projectile weapons just don't mean jack shit anymore.

Re:In other news...

[Mjlner]

But the real question is, why would the US want to invade North Korea?

Ok, kids! Let's say it all together:
WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTIONS!

Re:In other news...

[FlopEJoe]

Yeah... I first read this with the definition of cracker being "a poor white person in the southern United States." Started wondering what all those crackers were doing in NK and what they trained them to do. They're pretty good with shotguns and watching old cars rust on the lawn but that can't be worth the hassle.

(With appologies to our southern friends)

Re:In other news...

[AndroidCat]

No, they really meant those little crackers that you eat. Since the normal NK diet is cabbage and roots (when they can get them), finding a box of 600 crackers was big news. (And they're shaped like little PCs.)

Re:In other news...

[non]

are you aware of the estimates of deaths in a military conflict with north korea (#,000,000 in the first 20 minutes)? or that seoul and most of its suburbs are in an area known as the 'kill zone?' 30,000 artillery pieces within 30km of your capitol IS something to be afraid of.

Re:In other news...

[I confirm I'm not a]

Pedant: the Korean war didn't end. A ceasefire was agreed, and UN and North Korean officials still meet to discuss terms. No peace treaty has yet been signed, fifty years later.

...but aye, I know what you mean. I'm just a pedant when it comes to history... ;)

Re:In other news...

[Dusabre]

33% of shit still means shit. An Aegis costs as much as North Korea's military budget. 70's artillery, infantry and fighting vehicles are worthless against the US military machine which is built around smashing artillery, infantry and fighting vehicles. Saddam had better equipment in '91 and '03 than North Korea has in '04. He also had the 3rd/4th largest army in '91. He got creamed.

Problem with the US army is that it can't fight insurgents and doesn't want to learn how. As an aside, the moment that the military started boasting about bodycounts, I knew the insurgency was winning. The military should be boasting about how many guerillas didn't appear and weren't killed, rather than how many grabbed guns with glee and got bombed (along with civilians), dying in glee (going to heaven...).

The US (as part of the UN) fought China and North Korea to a standstill. Only Chinese intervention saved North Korea - at the point a million Chinese 'volunteers' intervened, more than 90% of North Korea was occupied by US/UN troops.

North Korea is accepting a market economy to the same degree that Castro is a nice guy whose only vice is smoking cigars. Believe it and you're believing the complex lies of a regime who only excels in lies.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

America can buy 3 smart bombs

Wrong. A modern JDAM smart bomb is less than $19,000. You can buy 50 of them for a million.

Re:In other news...

[ViolentGreen]

Vietnam wasn't a military failure. It was a policy failure: a failure to get the support of the folks at home. There were far more US military victories in Vietnam than defeats. The governments of Iraq and Afghanistan did not put up much of a fight. I don't expect the same for NK.

Re:In other news...

[sasenfus]

They are a backwards and desperately poor country, true, but they would be no pushover. All of the military evaluations are that an attack by NK would penetrate the DMZ and take Seoul. SK and the USA would win, eventually, but with many many casualties. They have vast artillery reserves in range of Seoul right now - the DMZ is very close. They could open an attack by shelling the capital. So taking out NK with military action is not a very attractive option. I don't even mention what they might do with the nukes they probably have if attacked - shoot one at Tokyo? Could be rather unpleasant.

Re:In other news...

[haggar]

North Korea IS a serious threat to South Korea. There is a very large number of hidden pieces of artillery along the North Korean border, pointed at Seoul. It is estimated that, should a conflict break out, North Korea could kill most of the population of Seoul in a matter of minutes. This, combined with the fact that N. Korea has a very active development program in nerve gases (tested on individuals and entire families in their numerous concentration camps), makes N. Korea a very dangerous entity to at least S. Korea.

However, I shold remind you that N. Korea has succesfully tested a ballistic missile that flew above Japan a couple of years ago. This, coupled with their activity in enriching uranium (it is estimated that they have enough enriched uranium for 4 to 6 fission bombs) makes N. Korea a serious threat to a larger number of countries.

Re:In other news...

[imsabbel]

Ok. Im not up to date.... just tried to remember some old gbu-10 numbers.
But of course the calculation should include the 50 million $ plane to drop the babies.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

The crackers in North Korea prefer to be called "sons of the soil," but it ain't gonna happen.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard you can't eat more then 7 of them in less then a minute... NK's must not be very juicy...

Re:In other news...

[Austerity Empowers]

Once upon a time Saddamn had a million man army (with outdated equipment) and he got destroyed miserably. Most of his troops disappeared or "got captured". North Korea has the same problems just far worse.

We can and should smack North Korea, the question is what will China do if we try. I'm not at all enthusiastic about starting a war with them. On the other hand, it may stop the labor outsourcing...hmm.

Re:In other news...

[Camel Pilot]

As an aside, the moment that the military started boasting about bodycounts, I knew the insurgency was winning. The military should be boasting about how many guerillas didn't appear and weren't killed, rather than how many grabbed guns with glee and got bombed (along with civilians), dying in glee (going to heaven...).

I vote Dusabre for secetary of state. This is same "metric of success" that was pioneered in Vietnam. The military is big on "lessons learned" so let's start applying "lessons learned" to leadership and overall strategy.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, they can wax Seol in an hour. There isn't enough high tech shit to stop them.

Re:In other news...

[Captain Large Face]

70's artillery, infantry and fighting vehicles are worthless against the US military machine which is built around smashing artillery, infantry and fighting vehicles.

And the nuclear weaponary?

Is it any wonder that President Bush attacked Iraq ahead of Iran and North Korea in his mission to liberate the citizens of the consituent members of the so-called Axis of Evil? The absence of a nuclear weapons program (as well as WMDs of any type) must have made the decision a lot easier.

One ought not to think one's country is better because they can defeat another country in battle. When did destruction become more important than creation? I wonder what would happen to the world if budget used for the 1.4m armed forces personnel of the United States and the 1.2m armed forces personnel of North Korea were used to pay those personnel to provide aid and help to others, instead of killing each other?

Interesting...

[ncaraballo]

Interesting since they seem to lack alot of technology up there. Have you seen satellite pictures? Seoul looks like L.A. while North Korea is pitch black. A very poor and low tech country last I heard.

Re:Interesting...

[bersl2]

The normal people are so food-deprived, there are claims of cannibalism in the North. Screw satellite pictures: technology is the least of North Korea's people's problems.

Re:Interesting...

[ArcticCelt]

"The normal people are so food-deprived, there are claims of cannibalism in the North."

If I was called a "cracker" I would be kind of worried about what you just said!

Re:Interesting...

[tod_miller]

If they get a penchant for good brains, then the intellectual community could be in danger!

Is there a north korean linux user group? Actually, joking aside, the US is more interested in bombing the shit out of North Korea than making any gestures of help for these people.

Now, if the US were at war with N.Korea right now, it would be so politically incorrect to say that.

Of course, it is not as if when GWBush gets re-elected that suddenly N.Korea will have some unquantifiable threat to the world, and maybe even this report is S.Korea helping the US villify N.Korea (not saying they are deserved of any villification)

Anyway, this isn't anti-US, I just hope that the near future of people who are hungry contains food, not bombs.

Although in the long term, bombs might equal MacDonalds, so HOLD ON!! MacBurgular is on his way!

Would you like fries with that?

Re:Interesting...

[kcelery]

Crackers elsewhere crack via internet. In this part of the world, it means those who want to crack into the internet.

Re:Interesting...

[mikael]

It is rather significant - even a rural village 100 miles away from the nearest town in an economically depressed country can afford to burn a couple of street lights at night. If no city in North Korea can afford street lighting, they are well beyond poverty level.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, it is not as if when GWBush gets re-elected that suddenly N.Korea will have some unquantifiable threat to the world, and maybe even this report is S.Korea helping the US villify N.Korea (not saying they are deserved of any villification)


It takes evil to recognize evil. An innocent child will not recognize evil.

To blame and villify others, you are only projecting your own image onto others, while refusing to take responsibility and take a really good look on your self.

Re:Interesting...

[bersl2]

Anyway, this isn't anti-US, I just hope that the near future of people who are hungry contains food, not bombs.

This is where the problem lies. We are giving them food. However, the North Korean government is re-appropriating this food for its own purposes. Besides that, the only reason they can't grow all the food they need is because the best farming land is reserved for opium, by mandate of the North Korean government. (The War on Terror intersects the War on Drugs. And there was much rejoicing.)

So let's see what options exist:
1) Bomb the fuck out of the North Korean military and invade. Problem: a modern government/military is comprised of "the people." Maybe an invasion would turn out like a bloodier Iraq on the front end, but it would surely be more worthy an action.
2) Disable the WMDs covertly, then negotiate now that they have no leverage. This is very risky and not likely to work.
3) Continue the economic sanctions on North Korea, but continue to give humanitarian aid. Same as usual, with no progress.
4) Completely cut off North Korea from the rest of the world, except China (probably). Does no good.

Kim Jhong-Il (sp) is entirely different from Saddam. Kim is a rising star as far as dictators are concerned, and Saddam was old and busted. Besides, North Korea has the WMDs.

In short: Yeah, I'd rather not see bombs. But the food is never going to get into the hands of the North Korean people as long as Dr. Evil over there is still in charge.

Re:Interesting...

[Echnin]

Yeah? I saw a web site where a guy was travelling around taking pictures. Can't find it now, sorry. But anyway, they went to a school and found a big computer lab. All the machines were running Windows, by the way. English versions.

Re:Interesting...

[tod_miller]

Well I admit I know very little about N.Korea (*despite* seeing the world is not enough twice)

I'd say develop a GM pest that attacks opium and send it in.

Then offer them a bone, and get them to talk in politics.

Read Gaurds Gaurds! (sorry to over siplify) but by negotiating using a carrot can be better than a stick.

Offer them something more, but on terms that makes it difficult to go back on.

Of course, again, over simplifying. Sorry. (i'd make a crap politician! I haven't got the money for it anyway!)

Re:Interesting...

[jedrek]

Bomb the fuck out of the North Korean military and invade.

The problem, of course, isn't one of a vietnam-style conflict, it's one of the North leveling Seoul to the ground via conventional arms. In every single conventional-arms scenario, Seoul is lost before the war is won.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting since they seem to lack alot of technology up there. Have you seen satellite pictures? Seoul looks like L.A. while North Korea is pitch black. A very poor and low tech country last I heard.

While there is indeed a lack of modern technology in North Korea, it's not like they couldn't afford a few PCs. In fact, visitors have reported seeing PCs running Windows, for example, in the so-called Children's Palace in Pyongyang.

But what could they do? I don't believe that most critical systems can easily be cracked from the outside, or it would have been done already. The thought that the ability to take out, oh I don't know, the Pentagon network or the NYSE system or whatever, is already out there but unused and, of all places, in Pyongyang, is too bizarre to be taken seriously. Maybe they're planning for a DDOS attack against Google or Slashdot or something.

The fact that North Korea is black during the night, BTW, is due to a chronic lack of electricity. They have regular power cuts, and the streets and public buildings are not illuminated most of the time.

Re:Interesting...

[Dagny Taggert]

I think you're thinking of www.simonbone.com. He went to N. Korea in 98 or so....very, very depressing place, IMHO. There are no easy answers here.

Re:Interesting...

[HeghmoH]

Actually, joking aside, the US is more interested in bombing the shit out of North Korea than making any gestures of help for these people.

Do you have any suggestions? The international community would be very happy to hear it if you actually came up with something workable.

The problem is that North Korea is both dangerous and oppressive on a scale that makes Iraq look like Luxembourg by comparison. While Iraq's people were somewhat poor and rather oppressed, North Korea is systematically crushing, murdering, and starving its people. It is more or less the crushing poverty and famine you would think typical of Ethopia with a government so tyrannical and powerful that it would make Stalin proud. The whole thing is run by nutjobs who are so into the cult of personality that the current President has been dead for over ten years and they still can't stand to remove him from the office.

Despite having an economy that is smaller than a medium-sized American city, and being full of starving people, this country has one of the largest and most powerful armies in the world. This is accomplished by spending almost one quarter of their entire GDP (note: not budget, but GDP) on the military. By contrast, the US spends about 3.3% of its GDP on its military.

North Korea is many things Iraq was not. It is genuinely, horribly oppressive. (Iraq's regime was evil, but not any more evil than dozens of other countries.) It has an actual, credible military threat to our allies in the region. (Seoul would be more or less flat within hours of the beginning of a war.) It has a great possibility of making life very difficult for any invaders, because of its gigantic army, the fact that the terrain is incredibly mountainous, and its people have been trained from birth to believe that their government is all that stands between them and a world bent on turning them into slaves. North Korea is also a pariah in the international community in a way that Iraq never was. The only country that even pretends to be friendly with them is China, and they only do it because it's a bad idea to piss off an army of a million fanatics sitting on your doorstep.

Oh, did I mention that this delightful place either has nuclear weapons or could produce them within a year if they so chose? Did I also mention that they have ballistic missiles with enough range to hit some targets on the west coast of the US? Another thing that's different from Iraq; they actually have WMD, and their leader is probably crazy enough to consider using them even if it meant the certain death of himself and 99% of his people.

Sending food, money, or anything else will not help these people. The North Koreans are suffering not because of abject poverty or famine, but because their government is totally insane. The poverty and famine is just a side effect.

The current plan seems to boil down to saying "nice doggy" and hoping that something changes. Leaving things as they are is not really acceptable, given that they will only increase their capacity to do murder and mayhem in the world at large. Invasion is pretty much out of the question, given the difficulty of protecting our allies in the region and the difficulty of actually winning. Engineering a collapse is out of the question for similar reasons; the only thing worse than having a million-man army lead by total wackos on your doorstep is having a the remnants of a million-man fanatical army suddenly stripped of its leadership and left to fend for itself, not to mention the nuclear weapons factor.

If you can come up with some kind of plan to help out, that would be great. The current worldwide consensus seems to be "pretend that there really isn't a problem, and hope that I'm out of office by the time it reaches the crisis point."

Re:Interesting...

[millwall]

Interesting since they seem to lack alot of technology up there. Have you seen satellite pictures? Seoul looks like L.A.

Intereting that you use L.A. as an example of how a high tech area looks like.

The first time I went to L.A. I was surprised how low tech the area looked like to me, especially with regards to the electricity and telephone lines blocking the view of the sky and the lack of modern public transport.

Re:Interesting...

[lombre]

the only reason they can't grow all the food they need is because the best farming land is reserved for opium

the highest estimate for north korean opium farms is 7000 hectares. Since they have 1,200,000 hectares of farmland this is not the reason for their food shortage.

note: the original fields where created by the Japanese during their invaison period so it interesting that NK is a big supplier of opium based recreational products to Japan now.

Re:Interesting...

[Yorrike]

I once saw a BBC report from a journalist in North Korea. His statement was simple; "You can tell how poor these people are. There is no smoke rising from the chimneys, yet the temperature outside is well below freezing".

Fourth largest army in the world. Though mostly due to the fact that being in the army is the best way to survive. You have to wonder how many NK personnel would defect if it came to combat.

Re:Interesting...

[Pogue Mahone]

You are, of course, talking complete rubbish. Just because a city pollutes the night sky with stray photons doesn't mean it's full of high-tech wizardry. In fact, if so-called high-tech wizards were as good as they like to think they are, they'd be able to come up with a way to provide sufficient illumination on the ground without lighting up the entire hemisphere in the process.

There is another theory that states that this has already happened. ;-)

Re:Interesting...

[G-funk]

The current worldwide consensus seems to be "pretend that there really isn't a problem, and hope that I'm out of office by the time it reaches the crisis point."

That's pretty much the most insightful thing I've read here in a long time, and pretty much sums up what's wrong with democratic capitalism as we have it at the moment.

Re:Interesting...

[tod_miller]

OK I was dubious at the first well informed poster, now we have two well informed posters.

How have completely failed to identify any threat in North Korea. [read on!]

They have a sucky country - they are all mad, they have weapons. [ok, read on]

What do they want? Does anyone know? Has anyone asked? [that was my point]

Are the hell bent on world domination? Are thier WMD's a symptom of aggressive sanctions or western sympathy for S Korea.

Has S Korea been jibing them about taking back the land?

Sorry - but what do they want? You cannot just say someone is a threat no matter how big thier gun is.

You have to assess motive, means *and* oppourtunity.

Are they just nutjobs who want to blow up things in the name of *insert religion here*.

Did they really not like Windows 95? Are they out for blood? Do they just want to run thier opium ops in peace?

Is the whole of N/Korea run by US interests, big drug lords who report to Bush in person!?

Sorry, I could google all this, but in all the air of worry about N Korea, noone has said anything sensible, except, crazed madmen, with guns! damnit! run for your lives.

What do they want? I am serious... I appreciate your post, I read it and found it very enlightening, but you have to admit, it begs the question - what is thier motive? fear of the western world?

What bred that fear? They fear us because we fear them because they have WMD... because they fear us because we have WMD?

I am even more puzzled!

News Just In: Cat Woman - the film - he used the verb Googled! Yeah! I google Halle Berry all the time... mmmmmm

Re:Interesting...

[puke76]

Their government is insane, certainly.

But they are also incredibly more isolated and paranoid than they used to be. I wonder why?

1. Dubya publicly states they are part of an "Axis of Evil"
2. N Korea gets paranoid about US aggression
3. N Korea withdraws from non-proliferation treaty
4. N Korea pursues uranium enrichment to protect their regime from the threat of invasion.


Things were a lot better before the sabre rattling/foreign policy cockups.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The problem is that North Korea is both dangerous and oppressive on a scale that makes Iraq look like Luxembourg by comparison."

Have you ever been to luxembourg?? fucking scary place. They strip search you before selling you CHEESE for fucks sake!

Re:Interesting...

[Master Ben]

that's true for the most part. However, most of the country is poor because their government takes a big slice off the top of everything. Although most of the technology in general is what we'd call primitive, they do have some nice higher grade equipment -- better than anything most of us will ever see.

Re:Interesting...

[WoodenRobot]

You have to wonder how many NK personnel would defect if it came to combat.

That's an important question. The NK government has become an expert on giving the populace a very, very distorted view of the outside world. The question about defectors is linked into how much they actually believe all the Stalinist crap they're told. Who'd want to surrender to the US/UN/whatever if we're the evil child killing capitalist bad-guys that the NK government makes us out to be?

If they knew what the situation is really like outside North Korea, I'm sure they'd turn in an instant, but the problem is breaking through the propaganda first.

Re:Interesting...

[gtall]

Hardly, you do recall the glorious effort of one James Carter, who convinced Bill "I'm stupid, its the economy" Clinton, that N. Korea would live up to food + aid for a stay in developing nuclear weapons. Only trouble was, N. Korea went ahead and developed them anyhow...said, U.S. was threatening them...and this with a U.S. President (Clinton) who's idea of retaliation was lighting off a few bottle rockets against Osama. When Dubya took office, he was presented with a fait accompli, N. Korea already had the enriched nuclear materials to build the bombs and the missile technology to deliver them.

Dubya spoke the truth and called the problem what it was, your problem is you just won't admit it.

Re:Interesting...

[HeghmoH]

That's entirely legitimate. Motive, means, and opportunity.

Means I already discussed.

Opportunity is there every day. It's just one order to send their army rushing across the DMZ into South Korea, start producing nukes, or launch those nukes at the US.

That brings us to motive. As you recognize, that's the most complicated piece of the whole thing. I don't entirely understand this part, but I'll do my best.

Korea's history in the 20th century isn't very happy. It spent most of the first half of the century under Japanese occupation. The Japanese were not known as particularly friendly occupiers (this is putting it much nicer than it should be). As the Second World War came to a close, Korea got liberated from two directions at once, with the US coming in from the south, and the USSR coming in from the north. Just as in Germany, the two sides immediately set up governments that were loyal to them. Of course, the US claimed that South Korea was an independent ally, and North Korea was a puppet to the Russians. The USSR claimed the opposite. Presumably the truth was in between.

Anyway, to cut the story short, war happened, with each side getting lots of assistance (and presumably more than a few orders) from their superpower allies. Each side saw the other side's system as fundamentally evil, and something that had to be stopped, but pragmatically there was nothing more to do. Like in Germany, the two sides were forced to deal with each other. Unlike Germany, the two sides had spent years fighting each other in war, and relations were much colder. The two Germanies kept reasonably close all through the Cold War, but the two Koreas were (and still are) separated by the most heavily fortified border on the planet, just waiting for somebody to twitch and start another war.

Fast forward a few decades, to the 90s. Communism collapses or transforms worldwide. By 1992, the remaining countries that are still actually Communist (and not just calling themselves that) have dwindled to, basically, Cuba and North Korea. North Korea's two big traditional allies, Russia and China, have basically converted to the other side and are busily making friends with the West. China is still Communist in name, and still making friendly gestures to North Korea, but nothing significant.

Motive for the leaders depends on whether you think they are idealistic or pragmatic. If they're idealistic, then North Korea is pretty much the last bastion in the world for Communism. The Imperialist Capitalists have conquered pretty much the rest of the planet. If they're pragmatic, it's almost the same, just with a cynical touch; the entire power structure depends on the rigid Communist system. They fear, rightly or not, that reforms will destroy their government.

Motive for the people is simpler, since they hear what their government wants them to hear. The fact that the US has had troops in South Korea for over fifty years doesn't help. Never mind that it's not an occupying force; government propaganda excels at twisting the truth in subtle ways.

The three disaster scenarios are collapse, conventional attack, and nuclear attack. Collapse doesn't need a motive, of course, since it wouldn't be intentional. Both attack scenarios share a motive; they provide hostages to secure the country's safety (the inhabitants of Seoul for the conventional attack, the inhabitants of Seattle or San Francisco for the nuclear option). Conventional attack has another potential motive, which is conquering/liberating the South. Take the fact that diplomatic communications with North Korea are almost nil, combine it with the fact that the North's leaders are incredibly paranoid, and you have a situation which is ripe for misunderstandings. MAD only works well when both sides are rational and communicating with each other. It is entirely conceivable that a move which we think is non-threatening could be interpreted as something which needs a response.

Re:Interesting...

[stephanruby]

Intereting that you use L.A. as an example of how a high tech area looks like. The first time I went to L.A. I was surprised how low tech the area looked like to me...

Have you ever been to a mountain where there is no wind and no sound and it's just very peaceful there. Now just imagine hearing the same silence over their capital, because there is not even one car or one sound you can hear. I was watching a documentary on this and that's basicely how the guy described it, startling silence.

Re:Interesting...

[ViolentGreen]

An invasion wouldn't work without heavy bombing and civilian casulties and probably a nuclear attack on SK or Japan and the ensuing retaliatory attack. NK has a huge army and the largest special forces division in the world. On top of that, they are all in a relatively small country. I'd be like invading a beehive. A behive with nuclear weapons.

Re:Interesting...

[dario_moreno]

well, but North Korea has no oil.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dubya spoke the truth and called the problem what it was,

He said that Iraq was the single biggest threat. He called it "uniquely dangerous". Was that truthful?

No- he knew at the time that NK had more weapon capability. But Bush ignored that NK was much of a problem at all.

Re:Interesting...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Training hackers is like hiring Kevin Mitnick to report on hackers for you. They will not only disobey you, they will attack your own systems for fun and games.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. And its the US shouldering the burden of the whole world!!!.
What's next?. You would like barging into any house and replace the family's head just b'cos he's a bad guy and beats up his wife and kids?. Do you think the wife and kids would prefer you over him?.

Re:Interesting...

[torpor]

Besides that, the only reason they can't grow all the food they need is because the best farming land is reserved for opium, by mandate of the North Korean government.

Hey now, are you sure you're not getting your brainwashing about N. Korea mixed up with the brainwashing about Afghanistan?

Re:Interesting...

[ViolentGreen]

Fourth largest army in the world. Though mostly due to the fact that being in the army is the best way to survive.

Perhaps. I'm sure it has more to do with the fact that it is required.

Re:Interesting...

[Raffaello]

Dubya's screw up was in terminating talks with the North Koreans because they violated terms of the existing agreement.

Everybody else in the world understands that North Korea violating an agreement means "I want to re-negotiate the terms of this agreement." The Bush administration, under the tutelage of that complete moron Wolfowitz, decided that "toughness" would yield better results. Talks ceased. The only result is that N. Korea (in their minds) were forced to up the ante.

So we went from close inspection of their nuclear facilities, to none, from dialog to no dialog, from potential for nuclear weapons, to actual nuclear weapons paired with ICBMs that can reach the continental US. Way to go George! Now you see why Kerry was hammering Bush over this issue in the Debate last week.

Bush thinks that acting tough solves all problems. The reality is, it only works with certain countries, in certain situations. Bush has proved pretty much conclusively that it doesn't work with North Korea. As previous posters have commented, the reason is simple: North Korea has too much leverage over its neighbors in the region. And now, thanks to the moron Dubya, North Korea has leverage over the west coast of the US. In case it isn't completely obvious yet, we need a new president if only to save us from the very real possibility that Dubya's diplomatic retardation will bring on a regional nuclear catastrophe that might very well include the west coast of the US.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

The current worldwide consensus seems to be "pretend that there really isn't a problem, and hope that I'm out of office by the time it reaches the crisis point."

That's pretty much the most insightful thing I've read here in a long time, and pretty much sums up what's wrong with democratic capitalism as we have it at the moment.

Personally, I'm curious which other *ism has a better idea.

Re:Interesting...

[Proc6]

Oh sure. Manufacture an insect that lives to get high on opium. What do we do when it takes over the lands and starts wiping out humans? Each little bug will be able to take a dozen rounds of 9 milli's to the chest and keep coming at you!

Re:Interesting...

[puke76]

Dubya spoke the truth and called the problem what it was, your problem is you just won't admit it.

Err.. right.

Perhaps I didn't make my previous post clear enough. We had a dialog with North Korea, before Dubya came along and severed it.

Re:Interesting...

[Oddly_Drac]

"Do you have any suggestions?"

Stopping politicians calling them an 'axis of evil' might help, as it only seemed to provoke a clampdown in the steps they _were_ making to come into the fold of reasonable nations. Calling someone 'evil' is a purely subjective judgement anyway, as they're trying to do their own thing within an ideological structure that they think is right. You don't score points by being critical.

"Oh, did I mention that this delightful place either has nuclear weapons or could produce them within a year if they so chose?"

So you're told, but from what I've checked out they have have no delivery systems worth a damn; bear in mind that you pointed out that they're using 33% of the GDP akin to LA to even fund research into this, making the scary picture of the next big threat seem a little more contextual. If they did anything with a nuclear weapon we'd be looking at a nice glassy crater within a couple of hours of deployment.

What you fail to have pointed out is that the threat is the loaded gun behind the handouts, aid packages and the like. It's a trading chip and entry into the nuclear power club that they want. That the current regime is utterly corrupt and dumb is an indication that you just need to step back and let them implode. If they don't implode, then you have to watch your original assumptions.

"The current plan seems to boil down to saying "nice doggy" and hoping that something changes."

It's better than the alternatives. In context of the article, we just firewall them and cut their trunks...big deal. We have more than a million partially trained hackers in the Western world who have better infrastructure and equipment and a commerical aspect to keeping the internet running. It's a vast press release bit of FUD by a scared S. Korea. Incidentally, exactly the same message is coming out of a bunch of developing nations.

"Leaving things as they are is not really acceptable, given that they will only increase their capacity to do murder and mayhem in the world at large."

Give over. That's like saying that Iraq was a clear and present danger to Ohio.

"Invasion is pretty much out of the question, given the difficulty of protecting our allies in the region and the difficulty of actually winning."

And China.

"Engineering a collapse is out of the question for similar reasons"

And that the tame insurgent leader has a habit of turning around 20 years later and biting you on the ass.

"not to mention the nuclear weapons factor."

Which would be a massive PR blunder for any nation; use of 'WMD', to use the current buzzword, carries the heaviest penalty available in the world today...intense scrutiny and hi-tech weaponry guide by GPS. Even China would step aside in the face of something happening along those lines because of the idea of them.

"The current worldwide consensus seems to be "pretend that there really isn't a problem, and hope that I'm out of office by the time it reaches the crisis point.""

It's already in progress and has been for the past decade...it was only the vast PR fu**up I mentioned at the start of this that actually made them recoil. You don't go comparing regimes to other regimes without triggering comparisons, and if that regime is 'insane' it will act in an insane manner. THIS WAS OBVIOUS.

Saber-rattling at this point will provide defiance, but it's best to simply ignore N Korea before it does something because it's looking for a stage. South Korea is looking for reassurance from the west that it would be unwise to give because it escalates the problem.

Yes, the current opinion is to wait and see, but it's better to do that than _really_ mess things up.

Re:Interesting...

[tod_miller]

Thank you for such a greast write up - it puts it into perspective. It is obvious what caused the political emnity between N&S, and following this, the populace see the N/S divide continuously.

This still doesn't say what the North wants...

To rule the south? to stop people looking at it like it is a crazy homicidal country?

They are fearful (my $20 says rightfully so) that world politics is scheming to take it down. This breeds more fear and war rhetoric, which breeds more scheming.

I think the North and South need to become one. How to happen?

First, if you tell the north this, they will let off all thier nukes thinking you are poised to crush them all out of history.

They are cornered really.

We need, as a global community, to voice support for north korea in all actions that are peace related.

Then we can remove barriers.

Political... we need to get thier political government to realise that they cannot be at war, but to give them a 4 year governance of the north 'district' or new korea.

When they realise this position removes all need for them to worry about food, education and jobs in north korea, and they get a nice car and house, they will comply.

Then they get phased out by elected officials - politics can do in 10 minutes what it would take 6 months of bloody combat to do.

or undo.

Now, I'd say not let America take the forfront in this, send in euro-china groups of people who negotiate, rejoin korea, and get america the heck out of s.korea.

Think about it.

Imagine someone is mad at something being there, if you distract them enough to remove it, when they look back, they loose all motivation to be mad anymore...

OK, this again is probbaly oversimplifying it - but N and S korea must be rejoined in a peaceful manner, the US troops must leave, and north korea must be given worldwide aid, and not fund more western companies (arms companies, security companies, building companies)

At the same time, build a positive spin in S Korea, who probably see N Korea as a big pain in the ass now after al these years and do not want them back, explain that they are the same country, also, more importantly, show that US and Russia will fund the operation, because thier puppet war started it.

(sorry crude and simple)

As peqace plans go, I think it is the only option. If N Korea doesnt exist, the problem is gone. Korea can slowly repair its damage. /. explanation

If you have a -2 Troll country with WMD - it stands to loose nothing if it fires them in a pre-emptive strike against aggressors who are worried about such an preemptive strike, but whose very worrying, causes it to be more likely.

If you have a +2 insightful country who takes on a -2 Troll country and merges, and becomes a 0 moderated country (or +1 funny for sakes of statistics) then they have something to build on.

Thanks to HeghmoH for tolerating my quite ignorant views of Korea, and providing such insightful debate!

I don't claim what I have written is write or attainable, only what I think is quite a good diea at the time.

Re:Interesting...

[Zak3056]

Actually, joking aside, the US is more interested in bombing the shit out of North Korea than making any gestures of help for these people.

I know US bashing is ever so popular, but we're donating 50,000 tons of food to North Korea this year. And despite BBC's take on the issue, we've been giving food to North Korea for years. I understand most of it goes to feed Kim's military instead of reaching the people we're trying to help, so it's no wonder we're sending less than we used to.

Now, if the US were at war with N.Korea right now, it would be so politically incorrect to say that.

We are.

The Korean war (1950-1953) ended in an armistice, and not a peace treaty, so the US (and, techincally, the United Nations itself) is still at war with North Korea.

Re:Interesting...

[antifoidulus]

What the hell was Clinton supposed to do, attack North Korea? Are you THAT stupid? Are you totally un-aware of the number of heavy artillery guns pointed at Seoul? If the Americans were to attack, the first wave would have basically been going on a suicide mission. Let alone mention the number of civilian casualties in Seoul. Or you could be really stupid and used nuclear weapons. China would have LOVED that. Or Clinton could have just used tough words but left North Korea to it's own devices like Dubya and they could have even more bombs and missiles by now. What a great idea!
Tell ya what, I'll support an attack on North Korea if you, Jenna, and Barbra the younger are all defending the DMZ. Something tells me if those guns were pointed at you, you wouldn't be acting so tough.

Re:Interesting...

[wagemonkey]

Now, if the US were at war with N.Korea right now, it would be so politically incorrect to say that.

Technically the Korean War is not over, there was a cease-fire but the war didn't officially end.
I can't remember if the US was actually at war or 'just' part of a UN force - not that that would matter to the 37k+ US solders who died there - along with many more from other countries.

Re:Interesting...

[jkantola]

Anarchism.

It works for *all* the rest of nature.

Re:Interesting...

[swillden]

Anarchism. It works for *all* the rest of nature.

For a suitable definition of "works".

Re:Interesting...

[HeghmoH]

Thank you for such a greast write up - it puts it into perspective. It is obvious what caused the political emnity between N&S, and following this, the populace see the N/S divide continuously.

This still doesn't say what the North wants...

To rule the south? to stop people looking at it like it is a crazy homicidal country?

They are fearful (my $20 says rightfully so) that world politics is scheming to take it down. This breeds more fear and war rhetoric, which breeds more scheming.

I think you have it pretty much right. What they want, at least in the near term, is to survive. They believe their survival is threatened. It may be so. Which one happened first is irrelevant at this stage; the situation is unstable and can't go back to how it was by just having one side back down. When you believe that your enemy will do anything to beat you, you will not believe the evidence when your enemy backs down.

I think the North and South need to become one. How to happen?

Consider the pain that Germany went through during reunification. The difference in the economies of the two sides made things very difficult, and East Germany was one of the most advanced economies on the Eastern side of things. East Germany was incredibly rich compared to North Korea.

One of the North's biggest international supporters, in terms of money and whatnot, is actually South Korea. They support the North because they fear collapse or reunification even more than the existence of their crazy neighbor.

First, if you tell the north this, they will let off all thier nukes thinking you are poised to crush them all out of history.

They are cornered really.

I agree 100%.

We need, as a global community, to voice support for north korea in all actions that are peace related.

I think this happens already, it's just that they do so little. When they apologized for kidnapping various Japanese people last year, everybody gave them a big pat on the back. Then they ruined it by announcing that they had, in fact, not followed the terms of the 1994 agreement and had an active nuclear weapons program.

Then we can remove barriers.

Political... we need to get thier political government to realise that they cannot be at war, but to give them a 4 year governance of the north 'district' or new korea.

When they realise this position removes all need for them to worry about food, education and jobs in north korea, and they get a nice car and house, they will comply.

Then they get phased out by elected officials - politics can do in 10 minutes what it would take 6 months of bloody combat to do.

or undo.

This sounds pretty ridiculous to me. Power is not acquired because of the creature comforts that come with it. People don't want to rule a country because the job comes with a nice house and it guarantees that their kids have enough food. Power is not a means to an end, it is an end in and of itself. Somebody who has risen to the top of a Stalinist totalitarian system will not give up that position willingly, no matter what happens.

These people will go down figting if they go down at all. Given the alternative between being being found in a hole in the ground by US soldiers after being overrun, and being set up with a nice house and a luxury car in the countryside, many people will legitimately choose the former. But even rational people will eventually come to the same decision. In order to protect your position from outside invasion, you must threaten a long and bloody resistance. Your threat has to be credible, meaning that you're pretty much forced to carry it out if it ever comes to that.

The same thing goes for people who keep pointing out that using nuclear weapons would be suicidal. That's true, but it doesn't preclude their use. The use for the weapons is as a threat, but in order for the threat to work, it has to be a credible threat.

Now, I'd say no

Re:Interesting...

[Money for Nothin']

That's pretty much the most insightful thing I've read here in a long time, and pretty much sums up what's wrong with democratic capitalism as we have it at the moment.

How is capitalism at fault here? How is democracy at fault here?

And why would an undemocratic, non-capitalist system be any better? Oh wait, undemocratic, non-capitalist -- that's what North Korea is!! Whoops.

Re:Interesting...

[electroniceric]

Incredibly insightful posts. Thanks for the history and geopolitics lesson.

Some questions and some thoughts.

Questions:
Is Beijing in range of North Korea's missiles?
How effective would bombing southern missile emplacements be? A missile attack on Seoul really only becomes mass death if:
a) there are a lot of them
and/or
b) their combined effect is great (i.e. firebombing, etc.)

I thought I read something about a North Korea-Pakistan link. Have you heard anything about this?

Thoughts:
This seems to be yet another example of a two-bit dictatorship that came as a result of rapid disengagement by the world's superpowers (USSR/Russia, USA, China). It's amazing how well running a country as a military outpost and then leaving abruptly works to foment hatred and dangerous regimes.

To my armchair international negotiator's brain it seems that the only road is to help create a legitimate political alternative to Kim Jong Il.
N. Korea/S. Korea is like Isreal/Palestine to me in that there is really only one endgame, and that's a single state. Fortunately, the S. Koreans are apparently all for this (not so sure it'll pan out like they hope when millions of starving, illiterate, brainwashed peasants coming storming down looking for jobs in Samsung's HDTV plants). One of the key difficulties with Palestine is that lack of a real political infrastructure with whom to negotiate - one with enough legitimacy and clout to tell Hamas and Hizbullah to piss off. Arafat has always been more interested in posturing than in any real,on-the-ground politics work.

Yes, the approach is long and fraught with difficulty, but it can actually work. Countries like Poland, Mexico, India have all worked their way back from dictaorships to more or less functioning democracies. Given how paranoid Kim Jong Il is, and the current disarray of the US diplomacy, not to mention HUMINT, this is a decade-long project (which, as you note, makes it very hard for any one politician to own it). It is also one where the likelihood of being hornswaggled by an Ahmed Chalabi-type character is just as high as in Iraq and the stakes are 100 times as high. But it does have potential to bring real stability.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree. It's not pretending that there isn't a problem, it's just recognition that there is no "safe" answer to the problem. How do you solve the problem without resulting in massive loss of life in the South Korea, China, Japan and other areas?

The best solution is what we did during the Cold War. We keep up the balance of power, forcing them to keep up as well, until they collapse internally. Given their current GDP spent on defense, eventually something has got to give.

Re:Interesting...

[sadler121]

I agree that a war with Korea could quickly escalate to a mini, if not, full out right World War III (nukes and all) and that the draft, with out a question, would be reinstated because of the HEAVY casualties that the US will face. breaking the cease fire with N. Korea, (we really didn't sign a peace treaty), and commencing a full scale war would be a lot more of a noble effort than the current war in Iraq...Hell, I would even been tempted to enlist, just to show my support (26 now, so a draft would evade me, at least for the first few years of the war).

That being said, with our dry drunk president, unless N. Korea suddenly develops massive deposits of oil than theres no way we are going over there...

Re:Interesting...

[Genjurosan]

What you said about the US giving food is such a status quo situation. The US gives food, money, and aid to countries all over.......... but what happens to that aid? Most of is it re-appropriated by the people in power for their own gain. Then the 'people' become upset and the 'power' structure points the finger at the US. Hence, anti-Americanism. The 'power' structures of these countries know that hate redirected will allow them to extend their term of rule and allow them to further entrench themselves. The 'people' are so hopeless that any type of reasonable excuse is better than the truth. The truth that they are being sold out at the cost of their lives, families and futures is simply to much to handle.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about?

Insects have absolute monarchs.

Herd mammals have something approaching a tribal democracy.

Hummingbirds? They are anarchists.

Re:Interesting...

[joshmccormack]

Good points, but perhaps things are already being done. Sactions, supplying them with food and talks all seem largely useless. But putting the plans on CNN for the world to see and approve wouldn't be wise, either.

The US presence in S. Korea seems to be tightening up a bit, doesn't it? Read this: http://usinfo.state.gov/eap/Archive/2004/Jun/29-53 5351.html and consider what other posters have said about Seoul falling, think about how S. Korean troops would be regarded differently in N. & S. Korea and globally. And consider the US missile defense system http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A966 1-2004Aug17.html Bush is building and Kerry opposes.

Re:Interesting...

[fbjon]

That's an interesting site (Clicky: http://www.simonbone.com/myohyang.html)

Now, the only connection North Korea seems to have, at least for tourists and diplomats/business men is an expensive satellite connection, and it's in the diplomatic quarter of Pyongyang. (source: Lonely Planet) If there isn't a single cable out from the place, they would have to do their business from outside the NK border. Also note that it is illegal to bring in modems to the country, and that the phone system (whatever is left of it) is disconnected from international phone lines. So if NK wants to do funny business on the net, that will put China under pressure (or S.Korea, if they can sneak in there). South Korea certainly doesn't want any N.Koreans there, and China routinely sends back N.Koreans that police finds. The hackers would not only have to be hackers, but also sneaky spies, tiptoeing through enemy territory just to winnuke some machine in the US. I wouldn't be too worried about this particular threat.

Note that this doesn't mean the rest of the world shouldn't be worried about NK, just that their hackers might not be the ones to pose a threat.

Re:Interesting...

[HeghmoH]

Incredibly insightful posts. Thanks for the history and geopolitics lesson.

Thanks for the compliment. I don't know how much I deserve it, as I'm basically just going by memory with a little help from the World Factbook. In case anybody isn't already, take everything I'm saying wiht a grain of salt.

Some questions and some thoughts.

Questions:
Is Beijing in range of North Korea's missiles?

Beijing is a couple of hours by airliner to the west of North Korea. Although the missiles probably aren't aimed in that direction, if we're beginning to talk of a credible threat to parts of the continental US, then all of China would be within range.

How effective would bombing southern missile emplacements be? A missile attack on Seoul really only becomes mass death if:
a) there are a lot of them
and/or
b) their combined effect is great (i.e. firebombing, etc.)

The threat against Seoul isn't missiles, it's artillery. Seoul is very close to the DMZ, and it's within range of thousands of North Korean artillery emplacements. I've seen estimates that the North could put 100,000 shells an hour into Seoul during the opening hours or days of a war. Taking them out preemptively isn't really workable, because artillery is numerous, small, and hard to destroy.

I thought I read something about a North Korea-Pakistan link. Have you heard anything about this?

I believe there has been some exchange going on involving nuclear weapons systems. Possibly North Korean missile technology in exchange for Pakistani warhead knowhow.

Thoughts:
This seems to be yet another example of a two-bit dictatorship that came as a result of rapid disengagement by the world's superpowers (USSR/Russia, USA, China). It's amazing how well running a country as a military outpost and then leaving abruptly works to foment hatred and dangerous regimes.

I think this happens because they were always dangerous, but formerly under control. Now there is no control. (This goes for North Korea, Iraq, bin Laden, you name it.)

To my armchair international negotiator's brain it seems that the only road is to help create a legitimate political alternative to Kim Jong Il.
N. Korea/S. Korea is like Isreal/Palestine to me in that there is really only one endgame, and that's a single state. Fortunately, the S. Koreans are apparently all for this (not so sure it'll pan out like they hope when millions of starving, illiterate, brainwashed peasants coming storming down looking for jobs in Samsung's HDTV plants).

You're probably right. I can't think of another country that was forcibly divided by outsiders and then stayed separated for so long. I'm sure somebody will remind me of some.

[snip] Yes, the approach is long and fraught with difficulty, but it can actually work. Countries like Poland, Mexico, India have all worked their way back from dictaorships to more or less functioning democracies. Given how paranoid Kim Jong Il is, and the current disarray of the US diplomacy, not to mention HUMINT, this is a decade-long project (which, as you note, makes it very hard for any one politician to own it). It is also one where the likelihood of being hornswaggled by an Ahmed Chalabi-type character is just as high as in Iraq and the stakes are 100 times as high. But it does have potential to bring real stability.

The problem is that there is no incentive for the leadership to change, and as far as I know, no organized political opposition to the leadership. North Korea is, from what we hear, as close to a one-party state without opposition as has ever existed. (The reality may be different, as there is little information flow in or out that isn't controlled by their government.) One day the people may well rise up and take back control of their destinies, but it won't be soon. A decade seems highly optimistic; half a century might be workable.

Again, I don't mean to put the suggestion down. It's a lovely idea, and I'd love for it to work.

Re:Interesting...

[fbjon]

Have to reply to my own post here...

North Korea's TLD is .kp , but I can't find any sites there. Is there any way to find if there's a domain name registered ending with .kp? I kind of doubt there's any.

Re:Interesting...

[brocheck]

North Korea does not need to launch a nuclear or unconventional strike on south korea. It has 1,500 artillery pieces with Seoul constantly bracketed. The north koreans are capable of sustaining 500,000 rounds of fire on Seoul for aproximately a day. There would be nothing left of that city.

Re:Interesting...

[brocheck]

Sorry, I meant to say 500,000 rounds per hour for approximately a day.

Re:Interesting...

[Claw919]

You're mistaken about the delivery systems.

Their Taepodong-2 series:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/dprk/missile/td-2.ht m

...has a long range, estimated to be 4300kms for the 3-stage model.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent poster did not commit a solecism. If you had read the link you posted, you would see the following:

Hypothetical subjunctive ...
* If I were the President ...

In most varieties of English, this subjunctive can be replaced by an indicative when the if form is used:

* If I was the President ...

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seoul is actually in South Korea, which is a very technologically accomplished nation, and is reasonably friendly with the US.

Re:Interesting...

[Simonetta]

So let's see what options exist:

In economics class, we were taught that with every list of options, there was always one and usually two that weren't listed. Those are:

one: Do nothing. Completely ignore the situation. Pretend that it doesn't exist. Let it resolve itself.

two: The option that would never occur for you to think of in a million years. The option that is beyond the collective imagination of those examining the problem.

In regards to North Korea, I personally would recommend the first option of doing nothing. I see this a basically an Asian problem that will eventually have a fundamentally Asian solution. Why should people in Oklahoma or Vermont be concerned about 'doing something' about Korea? What could they possibly do that wouldn't make the situation worse?
America's policy on Korea has been to just throw things at the place. Money, Bombs, Solders, Tough Talk, more money, more tough talk. Plus the Americans bring lots of Korean people into the US in order to resettle them into districts where they will tip the balance to Republicans after they become US citizens (in about seven years) and vote. In return, the Koreans send the Americans the occasional lunatic preacher whenever they suspect that the fundamentalists there are getting a little too 'touchy-feely' in their devotional fervor. Then we end up having to deprogram a new set of young people all over again.
South Korea is one of America's true successes. After the World War II they were as hopeless, as poor, and as threatened as Palestine is today. Now it's time for the Americans to shut up and learn from the Koreans about how to solve some of their own problems.

Re:Interesting...

[matyas47]

The problem isn't with democratic capitalism per se. The original poster said "what's wrong with democratic capitalism as we have it at the moment." I wouldn't want to see fascism, or communism, or feudalism, or even true anarchism instituted, but the present system is broken. It is neither truly democratic (with the interestes of huge segments of the population un- or under-represented) nor truly capitalist (with a few large firms completely dominating the econony, rampant anti-competitive practices, and government handouts aplenty). It' become a cliche to say that we are inching towards fascism, and I'm going to resist judgement on that one for the time being, but it's enough to have smarter people than me bery worried.

Re:Interesting...

[upsidedown_duck]

It works for *all* the rest of nature.

Yes, and the lifestyle of a chipmunk getting rained out of its home only to be eaten by a cat is quite appealing, I must admit.

Re:Interesting...

[ThousandStars]

++ to this comment.

From everything that I've read, the plan in the event of North Korea's invasion is to let around 10,000 US troops die and let NK take most of the country until US reinforcements arrive.

Given the proximity of Seoul to NK and the firepower NK has sitting on the border, there is no other way. NK supposedly has an army of more than 1M. Even if the war were short (as in less than one year), 1M total causalities in SK would be probable.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which "few large firms" are "completely dominating the economy"?

Re:Interesting...

[jasmusic]

You are wrong. One only needs to witness evil or be victimized by evil to recognize evil.

Re:Interesting...

[ThousandStars]

Which would be a massive PR blunder for any nation;

I disgaree with much of your post, but I'm going to focus on this part: NK doesn't care about a PR disaster. They have no compunction about starving their own people and creating concentration camps on a scale not seen since the Soviet Union; there is no indictation that they would have any qualms about using nuclear weapons in a war. Even if NK isn't in a war, they've demonstrated a willingness to sell virtually any technology they possess, and that may include operational nuclear weapons. As bad as invasion may be, it would still be better than The Bomb smuggled into Los Angeles*.

We can't ignore NK because ignorning the problem makes it grow: today they may have five nuclear weapons; tomorrow that number may jump to 20. Today they may have operational 2-stage missiles; tomorrow they may have true ICBMs.

Our approach to Islamic terrorism was ignore it and hope it goes away. The failure of that approach has already been demonsrated.**

* This doesn't mean I advocate invasion: I don't for a variety of reasons. I'm only presenting a hypothetical scenario and am not implying a future in which situation A OR B will happen, because obviously we live in a more complicated world than that.

** I'm not equating the parent poster's position to advocating for terrorism, and I don't think if you're not with us you're against us, or whatever else the current administration claims. But the threats (terrorism, NK), although not identical, both show a tendency to grow with time.

Re:Interesting...

[Oddly_Drac]

"You're mistaken about the delivery systems."

Of course I would be. A quick google refers to a non-flight tested system that has between a 3000km and 9000km flight radius (reported) according to it's size, but thrutch is one part of the equation...guidance systems are another. If you read down the page, you'll notice that the information is between 4-5 years old with the indicator that they've tested the engines on stands. Guess what was announced this year as well?

Intelligence sources are almost non-existant in North Korea due to a paranoid regime, but the Iranian Shahab vehicles are _the same_ overall design, mainly due to technology transfer and the sale of a TD-2 on the open market. There have been constant rumblings about North Korea becoming a Middle-Eastern supplier of long range ballistic missiles, but the market has shrunk by two nations in the past 12 months. They don't have many places to sell them.

Until you've seen the bird fly, it's about the same threat as the supernova bomb I have in my garage, and the constant repetitions of American targets is some fairly cunning propoganda.

With the current geopolitical changes around the Middle East, I completely expect Iran to want to come back to the table without sacrificing face, the capture of the British patrol boat crew being a way to allay fears that Iran still has internal security despite what happened to Iraq, a nation with which they were deadlocked for a good couple of decades. I can't see them investing in a long range BM without having something to put in it, and they have to be a tad jittery about emplaced launch vehicles after what happened to Iraq.

Let's face it, there are a number of nations on the planet that have the ability to sterilise other nations completely, but the will to destroy your nation, people and country to bloody the nose of a 'hated' enemy is absolutely non-existent outside of fiction. MAD will stop North Korea attacking the continental US under all circumstances except invasion, and that is a mirror of the events that led to the Cuban Missile crisis.

Re:Interesting...

[Mad_Rain]

I think the U.S. has been dealing with North Korea's opium production with the kid gloves. The article there makes a couple of interesting notes:

"North Korea's exports from legitimate businesses in 2001 totaled just $650 million, according to Wall Street Journal reports of April 23, 2003, citing South Korea's central bank. Income to Pyongyang from illegal drugs in the same year ran between $500 million and $1 billion, while missile sales earned Pyongyang about $560 million in 2001. "

"the State Department report goes on to say that "We have not been able to confirm the extent of North Korea's opium production, though we did receive one eye-witness report of 'large fields' of opium growing in North Korea." The State Department report in 1999 "estimated" that opium production in North Korea was between 30 metric tons and 44 metric tons. Mr. Chairman, I find this statement shameful. Either American intelligence is inadequate, or the State Department can't bring itself to make a judgment call. If United States space surveillance assets cannot find and confirm the existence of opium poppies, which are brightly colored, seasonal, and grow above ground, we will never get adequate intelligence on North Korea's underground missile and nuclear weapons programs." - Dr. Larry Wortzel, testifying before congress. (footnoted in the article)

So it looks like the rest of the world sees a problem and the State Department is either oblivious or in denial.

Re:Interesting...

[clambake]

Do you have any suggestions?

Unify! Seriously, South Korea's culture would decimate the North Koreans. Just say, hey, you win NK, let's open the border... Two months later there will be no more North Korea to speak of. It'll be empty and South Korea will be filled with wide-eyed noobs who find themselves in an alien world they that can't comprehend.

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

well there is a work around to preventing total destruction of seoul its just military leaders arent smart enough to think of it yet.
the US could use empty warehouses in seoul and send over a couple of teams of engineers who could sit around and manufacture defenses and keep it a secret from everyone including S.Korea(because obviously N.korea is gonna have some type of spies there) while the teams of engineers manufacture defenses like partiot missiles among other things. And to ensure that N.korea doesnt pay to much attention the US could constantly divert thier attention to our troops in japan by them constantly running drills, yes it will put N.korea on alert but their alert will be paying closer attention to japan.
After about a year there should be sufficient defenses set up for an attack
but for the attack to work it would have to be extremely well coordinated with the chinese.
first off the chinese would start attacking the northern area of n.korea that they border and hit them hard(china has got there own defense so they can deal with n.korea's initial response there) as that begins we start moving are troops in that are in japan, N.korea will have been so caught off gaurd by the chinese attack that they will look away from japan and the US troops to focus on china.
As the US troops move in N.korea will then realize the US is attacking, so of course they will try and hit seoul, heres where the built defenses come in, they should last long enough for the US to get there and land and start invading.
this would probably be the only way for seoul to survive, of course it would still probably suffer around 30% damage to the area, but it would make it.. it wouldnt be pretty or easy but its probably the only way
also to note the day that this attack would take place obviously the US would have to already be flying B2's over so that way the exact moment the chinese attack the stealths start nailing everything they can. And it would be a good time to make good use of M.O.A.BS

Re:Interesting...

[psetzer]

The usual defense against an artillery barrage is called a trenching spade. Unless you have some mystical powers that make artillery shells bounce off you, there's not much you can do. Making some sort of anti-artillery interceptor would be extremely expensive, and you'd need at least ten million of them for good coverage, and you'd need it in secret, and in a short period of time. I don't see that happening.

On the other hand, you wouldn't win any brownie points for being a nice guy, but an extremely hard hitting preemptive strike could disable them, and this is the sort of situation that Tactical Nuclear weapons were made for. Otherwise, the old fashioned stuff can kill just as effectively as ever before.

Propaganda and food might also work. Dump a few million pounds of food and other such supplies on them, along with leaflets, radios, and the occasional case of cigarettes, and you might just see how high their morale really is. Hell, if you're really perverse, just dump cold, hard cash on them. Of course, they can't spend it there....

Re:Interesting...

[pnot]

The normal people are so food-deprived, there are claims of cannibalism in the North. Screw satellite pictures: technology is the least of North Korea's people's problems.

Thank you for your informative post; too bad it was modded flamebait. Here are some links for those who reckon it's "flamebait" to point out that starving people probably don't give a shit about their country's "intelligence warfare capability".

Re:Interesting...

[Master Ben]

If they knew what the situation is really like outside North Korea, I'm sure they'd turn in an instant, but the problem is breaking through the propaganda first.

I wouldn't bet on it. If they knew then more would enlist just to kick the US's sorry ass.

Re:Interesting...

[Pantero Blanco]

"An innocent child will not recognize evil."

Bull. They'll recognize it, it'll just take them longer because they don't expect it.

Re:Interesting...

[Jeff Benjamin]

Which would be a massive PR blunder for any nation; use of 'WMD', to use the current buzzword, carries the heaviest penalty available in the world today...intense scrutiny and hi-tech weaponry guide by GPS. Does anyone else find it a little scary that nowadays killing millions of people with a nuclear bomb is refered to as a 'PR blunder'?

Re:Interesting...

[G-funk]

Because it's our current implementation of democracy that rewards blame-casting, ass-covering, buck-passing and baby-kissing more than actions and sensible long-term planning.

Capitalism is less to blame other than it magnifies the effects of said problems due to the money-hungry corporate-sponsored media that is all 90% of the people have for information.

And don't take this for a pinko rant, either. Clearly, communism is not a better solution. What we need is a better form of democracy that's designed to function more effectively in modern times, and takes into account that the threat to the people is no longer from some distant king, but Monsanto, and TimeWarnerFoxMicrosoftAol (you get my drift i'm sure).

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

And look where that got things.

You idiot. You can't just reward them for breaking an agreement. That's just stupid. If it's not working, why hold up the facade?

Re:Interesting...

[Money for Nothin']

What we need is a better form of democracy that's designed to function more effectively in modern times, and takes into account that the threat to the people is no longer from some distant king, but Monsanto, and TimeWarnerFoxMicrosoftAol (you get my drift i'm sure).

Mmmm. Like a boycott?

Powerful business interests didn't stop black people in the southern U.S. from boycotting them and causing them to lose assloads of money. Take Woolworth's -- where are they now?

Now, I would agree w/ you in that boycotts don't seem very organized these days, or at least, people don't seem willing very often to commit themselves to a boycott of some product. We see it here on /. -- /.'ers constantly decry the evils of the MPAA, RIAA, and other 4-letter organizations. But when the latest "Star Wars" or "LotR" DVD comes out, who's first in line to buy them? The same /.'ers.

I'd hardly fault capitalism for that problem, or even democracy. That's the fault of those individuals who haven't the backbone and principle to stand by their beliefs.

I personally have nothing particularly against Walmart, for example, yet I almost never shop there. Why? Because their prices aren't *that* much better, they aren't close to me (yet), and the products they sell are of shit quality -- and I'm a *huge* believer in the saying "you get what you pay for." Seeing as Walmart sells cheap crap cheaply, I don't have much reason to go there. Plus I'm not a big fan of their anti-union, pro-illegal-labor business practices either.

It's a personal boycott, to be sure, and it does practically no harm to Walmart. But at least I stand by that conviction except when I'm desperate; it's *very* rare that I find somebody who is willing to stand by the same such convictions, even if they claim to hold an "anti-corporate" POV.

If others would join me in boycotting Walmart, whether for practical or principled reasons (I tend to use both), this would be a bigger issue for them. Alas, the spirit of hard-assed American principle has been eroded by decades of "government-save-me!" socialist preference...

Companies like Monsanto *could* be stopped -- if only there were people who:

1) care enough and work hard enough to compete in the same market as hard, or harder, than Monsanto, yet in ways they see as more ethical

2) care enough and be bull-headed enough about Monsanto's practices that they no longer deal with Monsanto

Instead of whining about the supposed evils of capitalism, well-sighted liberals -- take media mogul Ted Turner (founder of CNN) -- would be *far* more effective in using the power of the free-market's Invisible Hand to bitch-slap Monsanto and other unlikeable companies. Michael Moore is doing exactly this (selling "documentaries" that he knows people will want to watch).

There's no reason it can't be done -- except that it violates the first principle of modern liberalism: whine first and get the government involved. Take a page from classical liberalism instead: act first, forget the government, and harness your anger and hatred for [insert company] to beat them at their own game. :-)

It's a win-win deal: You make money and make the world a better place (at least from your perspective) at the same time!

Finally, to deflect an argument against boycotts I've seen before about how it's harder to boycott multinational corps because they have their feet in multiple nations: well, you have Internet access right? You can send text, graphics, videos, etc. around the world for pennies, right? (BitTorrent, anyone?) Just as Microsoft and IBM can offshore their code to India, you too can offshore (or, more-accurately in the anti-corporate case, *expand*) some of your protests against MegaFooCorp using the same technology.

Link up w/ Chinese and German protestors! Protest some corporation's acts on the same day! People did exactly that, worldwide, when the Bush

Re:Interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

that's a very good plan if you want all the people in DPRK to be completely destroyed, but it's not necessary, we need to get rid of Kim Jung Il and his army only without killing too many North Korean civilians.

Huh?

[shutdown -p now]

Crackers? You mean, the guys sit there and undermine US economy by cracking and distributing warez?

Re:Huh?

[Tore S B]

They followed the proper nomenclature (a pleasant surprise to me) and called malicious hackers "crackers".
See http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cracker.html
and then this:
http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html
I myself am personally offended when people think that hackers are malicious.

Re:Huh?

[Pieroxy]

I myself am personally offended
don't
when people think that hackers are malicious
They do, and they will for a long time to come.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Selv om noen tullinger midt på nittitallet fant ut at 'cracker' var slem 'hacker', så har 'cracker' altid betydd en som fjerner kopibeskyttelse (som bestefarposten sier) i datamiljøer siden sent syttitall.

Vi som er litt eldre er like irritert over din bruk av 'cracker'/'hacker' som du er over Amerikanske mediers bruk av de samme ordene.

Re:Huh?

[timmyf2371]

I myself am personally offended when people think that hackers are malicious.

That may be so, however I am personally offended when people refuse to accept that languages evolve - words in common use which have different meanings to much of society is a major part of the evolution of any language.

Re:Huh?

[ghostlibrary]

> Crackers? You mean, the guys sit there and undermine US economy by cracking and distributing warez?

Worse, they all have iPods!

No, wait, that's pirates. Sorry, wrong evil. Still, they probably stole their copies of Windows anyway. I say we nuke 'em.

[this message brought to you by WinTurf, the new way to change public opinion!]

Re:Huh?

[barthrh2]

Actually, just like in the good 'ol US they refer to Southeners as "Crackers". It's actually a big cooperation / peace project.

I'm actually imagining, like a big Moonie wedding, 600 gap-toothed rednecks in wife-beater shirts being trained by their Northern overlord.

Re:Huh?

[xutopia]

When you have two words, each with their own distinct meaning and one of them is used for both meanings your language didn't evolve. It devolved.

Re:Huh?

[nacturation]

They followed the proper nomenclature (a pleasant surprise to me) and called malicious hackers "crackers".

I wish people would similarly follow proper historical nomenclature for vehicles. It's the horseless carriage, people! Don't let anyone tell you it's a "car" or "automobile" -- they are just trying to rewrite history.

Re:Huh?

[ericspinder]

Depends on what you mean be 'evolve', I'm trying to push a meaning of 'evolve' which indicates backward movement.

Really I see the problem as a lack of a proper 'new' word. This community's approach to 'recapturing' the word 'hacker' has been to offer only the word 'cracker', which has been previous well known as a food item and as a racial slur. Not to mention that it's too close to the word 'hacker' to start with. You would be hard pressed to find a word for say 'shopkeeper' which can be changed to 'criminal' by just changing the first letter.

Black Hat Hacker is commonly in use as a replacement for 'Cracker'. While I beleive that it is a good compromise, it is still too easy to shorten to 'Hacker'. May I suggest that we refer to 'Black Hat Hackers' only as a 'Black Hat' or collectively as 'Black Hats'. The good folks at Red Hat may have a issue with it, but I beleive that there are several advantages to the use. 'Black Hat' is a wild west term, and many refer to the Internet as the modern wild west. It already has a negitive meaning, but is generally only known in a historical context. It's part of a term already in use to describe person who uses their knowledge of computers for nefarious activities, but short enough to roll of the tounge and easy to type.

Of course this will only work if we (as a group) refuse to use the term 'Hacker' at all. Use the term 'black hat', don't explain it just use it; it's 'cooler' not to explain it. Of course since I just explained it, I guess that I'm not very 'cool' (DAMN IT).

I'd even go as far a replacing '[black hat]' for every instance of the word 'hacker' in the orginal text of a reply. For example, I wrote:

I'd even go as far a replacing '[black hat]' for every instance of the word '[black hat]' in the orginal text of a reply.

Re:Huh?

[gekkotron]

No, no, no.
Not crackers like DOS kiddiez, crackers like this:

Courtesy of dictionary.com:
3. Used as a disparaging term for a poor white person of the rural, especially southeast United States.

They're training Florida voters.

Crackers?

[wtlssndlssfthlss]

Is it more politically correct to call us white-folk "honkies" these days? ;-) D

Re:Crackers?

[Anonymous Coward]

See, this is really funny, and I actually wanted to post something similar, but the morons at Slashdot are such politically correct automatons and over-sensitive and they'll shun this to a 1, when it deserves a 5 ...

Morons.

Re:hmm

[Cynikal]

oops

ignore me for the remainder of this thread.. btw, im not trolling, i just found it odd that the thread appeared without any comments at all.

which is better

[rock_climbing_guy]

Which is better:

A: to be able to have a hundred or so crackers attack a web site at your demand or

B: to be able to publish an article linking to them and therefore slashdot their communications into oblivion?

Re:which is better

[Deorus]

"A: to be able to have a hundred or so crackers attack a web site at your demand or"

Regular websides are not the real problem. The real problem is much worse than that, they can actually tinker with nuclear powerplants and such, it's already been proven that things in the US are vulnerable to that point.

"B: to be able to publish an article linking to them and therefore slashdot their communications into oblivion?"

I'd mod you up on funny for this one. :-)

Re:which is better

[Anonymous Coward]

> B: to be able to publish an article linking to them and
> therefore slashdot their communications into oblivion?

go for it then :)

Re:which is better

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

B: to be able to publish an article linking to them and therefore slashdot their communications into oblivion?

I'm just waiting for the Slashdot Effect to be classified officially as a WMD, so that next time there's an article that doesn't support Bush/Blair, the author can be branded a terrorist and summarily imprisoned without trial. But in the meantime, the US is allowed to have WMDs that no-one else is, so DoS away! :-)

Re:which is better

[Coelacanth]

You are so close. They are being trained to hack into Slashdot, and post front page articles linking to their targets. ..and to earn a Master's Degree, they are taught how to post dupes.

Check the source!

[barcodez]

The source of the story is the South Korea's defence ministry, sworn enemy of North Korea. They know this will worry western govts and so turn them further against NK. What reason do we have to believe this story? FUD, FUD, FUD.

Re:Check the source!

[really?]

Could well be you are right, but, as the saying goes "just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you." No?

Re:Check the source!

[imsabbel]

Hey. Finally the use of the word FUD in its true meaning. Didnt expect to live to see the day :)

Re:Check the source!

[elfstones]

Yes, it may be FUD, but I would not be surprised if being a cracker becomes permanently attached with being a communist if this story were to become well known.

Re:Check the source!

[sglane81]

Could well be you are right, but, as the saying goes "just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you." No?

I wasn't paranoid until they started coming after me.

By the way, someone you trust is one of us.

Hacked by Koreans

[CdBee]

This may be purely coincidental, but some months ago a friend pointed me toward the official website of North Korea out of amusement (its very much a dictatorial-regime website)

Seconds he and I both received warnings from our firewalls that we were under attack by a variety of means. The originating IP addresses were in Seoul.

Based on that, I wonder if the South Koreans have/had compromised a North Korean web-server.

Re:Hacked by Koreans

[DigiShaman]

So, why would the attack someone viewing the website? I'm not sure, but it sounds like the attack may have been redirected by a N. Korean hacker spoofing it from another machine in S. Korea.

Just a thought...

Re:Hacked by Koreans

[CdBee]

A very valid point. My supposition at the time was that the South Koreans wanted to know who was expressing an interest in the North, possibly even to monitor their own citizens, but it's just a guess.

Could even have been entirely coincidental and nothing to do with the website we were viewing.

Re:Hacked by Koreans

[airdrummer]

about once a week i get hit by attempted ssh logins, and maybe 1/2 of those IPs are korean...

Re:Hacked by Koreans

[Invisible Agent]

In the spirit of the article, it could also be that the North Koreans have extensively hacked/zombied tons of South Korean computers, and now that you foolishly gave them a vector for your capitalist pig-dog computer they pointed the zombies at you. :)

Unlikely, I grant, but South Korea's probably a great target for North Korean hackers: natural enemy state, plus South Korea has the world's greatest penetration on home broadband access.

Poor guys

[mkro]

They will be SO dissapointed when they discover that the rest of the world has upgraded from Win95, and winnuke.exe does not work anymore.

Re:Poor guys

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually had fun with that program. Back in 96/97, if someone on IRC pissed me off, I would BSOD their ass.

Ya, I'm a heartless bastard...but it feels sooo good to be bad sometimes. *grin*

Re:Poor guys

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the comments here demonstrate a complete ignorance and naievity of grade school students...it is fairly well known in that part of the world that the very latest computer technology from neighbouring Japan is routinely smuggled across the sea to NK...if you think obsolescence will protect you from an indeed brutal, repressive, insane government intent on the destruction of your government, you need to think again. I'm sure their best crackers are well taken care of, just like the NK elite, while most of the people are tortured for any thought against the government, starved, beaten and treated as slave labour.

Overdone, you say? Not really. Have lived in the afluent south for a couple of years, I saw school children routinely beaten/tortured for poor school performance. I can only imagine the horrors that go on in the north...

Re:Poor guys

[t35t0r]

I think this is the plan, wait out NK until their technology becomes so backward that we can just crush them with high powered lasers mounted on our humvee's and tanks, and similarly shoot down their missiles from hundreds of miles away with lasers on boeings.

ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[Underholdning]

You don't need 600 persons to commit cyber crime. You need one script kiddie with 600.000 zombie windows machines, since I reckon the most effective type of eWAR is ddos. Hacking one machine isn't nearly as effective as nuking an entire infrastructure using a distributed dos.

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hacking one machine isn't nearly as effective as nuking an entire infrastructure using a distributed dos.

depends on what you are trying to accomplish. if someone wanted to steal sensitive gov't files, a DDoS wouldn't make sense.

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[Ziviyr]

Its funny how some people seem to think flooding a pipe causes meaningful damage.

Oh no, someone is shooting gibberish at us, they're like, wasting bandwidth or something, I might not be able to access my data from a different location for a few minutes!!!

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[noselasd]

Hacking one machine is very effective/"important" if that machine contains the location of your enemys secret army stations, war strategy, new weapons research result, etc. etc.

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[geminidomino]

When the attack is maintained for more than "a few minutes" things change.

When the victim of the dDOS pays for bandwidth by the megabit, or has a bandwidth cap, things change.

When the victim of the dDOS is providing a critical service, things change.

Don't assume every host out there is run off some unmetered consumer DSL line.

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[ctr2sprt]

Just as a point of reference, 600k Windows zombies can push, in sum with 100% efficiency, about 17GB/s. That sounds like an awful lot, but the data center where I work can nearly do that. Furthermore, 600k home computers users with broadband is a lot. It can take over 24 hours to nmap 700 computers on a LAN, and you'd have to cast a truly enormous net: to infect 600k computers you'd probably need to scan twice that many; and to get that many actual computers, you'd have to scan - being somewhat optimistic - twice that many IPs. So you'd be conducting an nmap on some 2.5 million IPs. Possibly over a slow trans-Pacific link from China or NK. Even working in parallel, it's take weeks or months, and you've only got one shot. Once you launch the DDoS, at least two thirds of the boxes you hacked are going to be taken offline/patched/etc. Certainly you'll be able to reinfect some of them (and it'll be faster cause you know they're there), but you'd be lucky to keep half.

No, targeted hacking is a much, much bigger concern, because there are many Internet sites which centralize a lot of information on a small number of machines. At a certain scale, it becomes easier to hack a single, well-protected machine than it is to hack a large number of poorly-protected machines. Especially considering the dubious benefit of a one-time massive DDoS, it'd be far more effective to crack Amazon.

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[abb3w]

DDOS is less like a nuke, and more like throwing a flash-bang grenade at someone.

Results of a systems penetration and perversion by contrast would depend on how good intrusion detection systems are on the target, and the nature of the target for an intrusion. Financial systems would be an obvious target. Subtle corruption of data might be harder to correct. Were I wearing my black hat and at my most destructive, I'd try for a major financial institution (one of the top 10 banks, the five major financial exchanges, or the federal reserve); try for something that inserted a human-possible error (digit transpose, single digit error, or doubling a digit) into one transaction in every 1E6 or so to start. Rig the code so that this rate remains constant for 30 days. After 30 days, the rate begins an acceleration program, doubling the error rate every ten days. I'd also drop in something to initiate financial transfers after about day 30 if I could.

I'd want a trustworthy and trained team of about 30 to do it; at least a dozen broadband zombies per team member, with scattered IP addresses and locations; probably three months to determine the best system entry point, about a month for studying system design (replacable by a spy with access to system documentation, and a week to study it), about a week for the sabotage coding, and about a day for the intrusion itself. If it wasn't caught quickly, they'll have a major headache.

Hacking is not directly useful for land/sea/air warfare. It is more useful for "cold" wars (spy games), or "cool" wars (economic warfare).

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[mcrbids]

Furthermore, 600k home computers users with broadband is a lot. It can take over 24 hours to nmap 700 computers on a LAN, and you'd have to cast a truly enormous net: to infect 600k computers you'd probably need to scan twice that many; and to get that many actual computers, you'd have to scan - being somewhat optimistic - twice that many IPs.

Do you think that somebody actually sat down in front of nmap, and started scanning addresses to get these X00,000 zombies?

It's done automatically by worms and viruses, dude. Automated scanning. The computer, once compromised, "phones home" by various means to establish its role as a zombie.

17 GB/s? That's seventeen gigabytes of traffic every second. By my math, that's 90,666 T1 lines! (17,000,000,000*8/1,500,000) If you were to assume ALL the aggregated bandwidth at your hosting facility, you might get there. But, that's not counting normal, everyday traffic. That bandwidth usage will NOT be spread evenly to "spread the load".

Remember the recent article from England where people would be willing to trade their login/pw for a box of cookies?

I'm not saying that it wouldn't be more effective to crack Amazon, but I think a DDOS is awfully effective if delivered at the right moment, and it's more easy to crack most sites than you'd think, if you're willing to think outside the "do an nmap" box.

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[TyrranzzX]

There are 3 methods of attacking an opponent with IT devices; one which denies him his communications, the other which changes those communications, and finally those that listen in on those communications. If you know yourself, and you know your enemy, you are garounteed victory. If you know yourself and not your enemy, or you know your enemy but not yourself, you have a 50% chance. Oterwise, you're screwed.

Everyone is paranoid about having their banking records stolen. Nobody is paranoid about NC blackmailing senators.

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[Ziviyr]

But thats peanuts compared to irradiating everything for miles around you, yes?

Now look at the subject line.

If the Korean DDoS squad wants to harass a few net-businesses, well, that might eventually become troublesome.

I'd still be more worried about script kiddies at that point though.

You don't really see suicide bombers blowing up our freeways do you? Heck, you don't see bombers that live afterwards that cause even a couple hours damage there.

Its really peanuts compared to remote launching one of our own missiles into say, one of our cry-baby cities, like New York.

Heck, it'd actually be legal for a bunch of Korean citizens to get on the freeway, spread out, and pedal really slowly.

DDoS is so stupid...

Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke?

[geminidomino]

Wow.. Either I was really tired or I'm immune to the whole "terrorists are out to eat our hearts" rhetoric.. I have to admit, when I read the subject, I had the strange idea that OP was referring to winnuke, e.g.

what do they gain?

[Anonymous Coward]

At worst I can see various government websites going offline during a time of tension on both sides, this affects us how? If they crackers could take over satellites and our airforce and steer our boats and control GPS while taking control of nuclear facilities then sure, be scared. But they can't, so what if http://www.whitehouse.gov/ or http://www.fbi.com/ goes offline, is it really that much of a useful tool?

Re:what do they gain?

[peterpi]

You are either trolling or incredibly short sighted if you think that the only machines on the internet are web servers serving up static propoganda.

Do you carry out internet banking, for example?

Lol! Yeah, sure

[Anonymous Coward]

Just an other one of these horror stories. I mean just look at the stories about NK in the last years.

In NK 100 000s if not millions died in a famine, NK has acquired nuclear weapons and isn't even hiding them but wants the world to know it has them, NK has a army of 1 million men, NK doesn't follow any international treaty or UN resolution, NK kicked out weapons inspectors, NK is supposed to have ties with terrorists, NK constantly threatens its neighbors and now they engage in cyber warfare.

I mean, come on, if any of that was true Bush certainly would have attacked NK and not Iraq, that did not have ties with terrorists, did not posess WMDs and certainly didn't engage in cyber warfare.

So please calm down and trust Bush's judgment.

Re:Lol! Yeah, sure

[mpe]

NK has acquired nuclear weapons and isn't even hiding them but wants the world to know it has them

They work better at detering attack that way.

I mean, come on, if any of that was true Bush certainly would have attacked NK and not Iraq, that did not have ties with terrorists, did not posess WMDs and certainly didn't engage in cyber warfare.

Why would Bush want to attack somewhere which actually has WMDs, it would be worst than Vietnam for the US "body" count.

Re:Lol! Yeah, sure

[Zog The Undeniable]

Or maybe Bush knows you can't really win a war against a country which has nukes, where half the population belongs to a highly indoctrinated army, and besides, NK is a crappy little piece of the world with no money and no oil so it's not worth invading. I mean, I hate Bush as much as anyone else does, but he may have some common sense here.

Re:Lol! Yeah, sure

[Raffaello]

Except that Bush created the current situation by breaking off talks with NK. Before Bush did that, NK had inspections and cameras 24-7-365 monitoring their nuclear facilites and no nuclear weapons. Now they have nuclear weapons.

Bush's idiocy in NK is that he let them go from a regional threat to a Pacific threat - they now have the ability to lauch nukes against the west coast. Makes you feel good to live in California, Oregon or Washington.

Re:Lol! Yeah, sure

[Zak3056]

Why would Bush want to attack somewhere which actually has WMDs, it would be worst than Vietnam for the US "body" count.

We're not afraid of the WMDs. The big issue is that Seoul is so close to the DMZ, and North Korea has thousands of artillery pieces in range and pointed at said city. They don't need WMDs to deter any aggressive action, because they can kill millions with conventional weapons.

Re:Lol! Yeah, sure

[jasmusic]

Anyone can give an easy answer like that. But the stress comes with the wisdom that North Korea isn't exactly selfish about its WMD.

S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers

[Shinglor]

I'll take this story with a grain of salt :)

Five years?

[Inda]

I thought all this hacking stuff was learned in a few weekends and evenings using sites like astalavista..?

Jokes aside,... No I have one more.

Judging from the Koreans I've met playing online games, maybe 1 year is spent learning-to-hack; the other 4 are spent learning the social skills needed to relieve passwords by means of human to human attacks.

Re:Five years?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Judging from the Koreans I've met playing online games, maybe 1 year is spent learning-to-hack; the other 4 are spent learning the social skills needed to relieve passwords by means of human to human attacks.

That's because the wetware is the weakest link in most security chains.

No, that really wasn't a joke. It's sad, but true.

Re:Five years?

[irc.goatse.cx troll]

According from what I've learned by playing against them in online games, all we need to learn is how to defend against zerg rushes, and possibly develope some Stones Of Jordon to trade for their nukes?

Or to put it in their words,
HUK HUK ZERG RUSH ^_^ KEKEKKEK YUO GIEV SOJ?!??11

Me Too!

[Anonymous Coward]

I claim my neighbour is building a nucular bomb! Get him, guys!

Are we supposedf to be scared?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if they have 600 "trained crackers" - doesn't the US have the NSA? i.e. thousands, tens of thousands (or however many) of even better trained crackers. With cheese.

Dear N.Korea

[tod_miller]

One of thier applicants that only *just* made it through:

(mildly edited for 14mn3ss filterz_)

i would ;liock to join youre 733t gorup oF computer lAmErZ 4nd do 733T thins liek scrpit \/irusez and talk to chiX0rs uin funjny ways!!!! MY MUN SAYS IT IS OK, AND CAN I ALS0 SEUR NETWROK TO DONW7OAD NAUGHTY MOVEIS,, tnx b ill

courtesy of http://rinkworks.com/dialect/

Original [interesting]:

I would like to join your elite group of computer people and do elite things like script viruses and talk to girls in funny ways. My mum says it is ok, and can I also use your network to download naughty movies.

thanks

bill

Re:Dear N.Korea

[dema]

Here's a fun translation from The L33t-5p34K Generator!!!###

1 woulD L1k3 +o Jo1n y0Ur l33+ 9roUp of cOmpUT3R PeoPL3 4ND D0 L33+ Th1n9S l1K3 5CR1P+ VIru$35 4nD t4LK T0 GIrl$ iN PhunNy w@ys. my mUm 54Y5 1t i5 0k, 4nd C@N I @lSO u5e youR nE+w0rK +0 dOWnlo@d n4uGh+Y movi35.

+h4nk$

Much l3373r than yours I must say. You have been PWNT!

Re:Dear N.Korea

[tod_miller]

j00 \33t h4x0r j00!!!,, t33ch m333 h0\/\/ | can b3 s0 l33t!11

I f33l 20 Pn37 right now!111111

ZOMG!!

@Ll y0Ur 84SE 4re 83L0nG T0 u5.

Re:Dear N.Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

see slashdot through new eyes:

slashdot in redneck dialect

Misleading...

[Raynach]

I read the title and immediately got an image in my head of 600 saltines being whipped into shaped by some Korean headmaster...

God I need some coffee.

Waste of money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of the students they train probably end up spending most of their time stealing player profiles in MMORPGs.

Scary

[codepuke]

This is an incredibly interesting avenue. If an 18-year-old script kiddie could write MSBLASTER, just imagine what 600 of North Korea's best could do. I guess this could be considered a miniature version of our NSA, all be it controlled by the world's worst dictator. I think this calls for the US to get serious about consumer electronic security, mandating smart cards for online banking etc. Let's not make it easy for them...

Re:Scary

[Anonymous Coward]

...version of our NSA, all be it controlled by...

It's "albeit"

Re:Scary

[Secrity]

I know that there needs to be a dramatic increase in computer security in the US. Rather than force Americans to pay extra for smart cards, why not start by having the US banking officials require that internet connected ATMs not run unpatched versions of MS Windows? Or require that all PCs sold in the US that are sold with an OS be sold with a secure OS?

Re:Scary

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Rather than force Americans to pay extra for smart cards, why not start by having the US banking officials require that internet connected ATMs not run unpatched versions of MS Windows?

Because the decision about whether to apply an unknown and untested patch to a security-sensitive system isn't that simple.

Or require that all PCs sold in the US that are sold with an OS be sold with a secure OS?

Because on current evidence, there is no such thing, and even if there were, there would be no way to prove it.

There are many much better ways to deal with the sort of problem we're talking about, starting with not connecting every computer in the world together via a global network that has a laughable basis when it comes to security.

Re:Scary

[stephanruby]

Why mandate anything? The banks that have insecure systems will bear the cost of their insecure systems. And the merchants that accept insecure paiments with delivery addresses to South Korea will also bear some of that cost. There is no need to panic.

Re:Scary

[Artifakt]

There ARE a few things Joe Average can do that will make this less easy for them...
As just one example ...
One small step every person with a debit card can do is encourage businesses to get the tech to process it as debit, rather than running it as a credit transaction at their end. That little PIN is a bit of extra account security for the customer, which is lost when the business can't handle it at their end, and the business loses as well when they pay the credit card company about 2%/transaction for the privledge of handling credit cards.
Many businesses still don't realize this is a potential savings for them and a win for customers. Tell managers and small business owners it's something you want, and you tend to give your business to companies that have it.
If you are actually a loan officer for a bank, not having a plan to add debit processing capability should be a black mark in considering small business start-up plans for loans, for the same reasons. If you invest, it's one of the things you should check before investing in a retail business.
If you don't have a debit card, but use credit cards, you can't help with this, but you might want to consider how in-frackin'-credibly vulnerable you are to being the hardest hit person by an information warefare era attack.

Yawn.

[salvorHardin]

Reminds me of a similar thing in NTK a while back.

> DISABLE ECONOMY
> You cannot do that here.
> EXAMINE CYBER INFRASTRUCTURE
> Access Denied.
> HIT ECONOMY WITH STICK

Just cut the cables.

[caluml]

Bit self defeatist, isn't it? Now, should anything happen, the main internet links between NK and the rest of the world will "accidentally" be damaged, and magically all the problems will stop. Does anyone know of a site that lists all the ranges by country? I started to do it, but the RIPE whois server blocked me :\

Re:Just cut the cables.

[caluml]

OK, OK. So far it appears that these specific attacks are based in China. Doh.

Re:Just cut the cables.

[salvorHardin]

Firstly, it isn't that simple, as the whole point of the internet was that you could nuke certain parts of it, but basically, it would still continue to function. So you cut the link to China/North Korea, or you blackhole the address range. So they route out via someplace else.

Re:Just cut the cables.

[Tore S B]

That the internet (AKA Arpanet) was built for the purpose of withstanding a nuclear blast is a myth. It was a happy coincidence.

I refer you to http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/I/Internet.html

Re:Just cut the cables.

[lifes a cluster]

> Does anyone know of a site that lists all the > ranges by country? blackholes.us

600 Korean cracks...

[rathehun]

Yeah right. And the Chinese are stockpiling nuclear weapons. WAit - we have both.

and then it happens

[Konster]

If they start hacking us, we will cut their phone line, this rendering their sole 300-baud modem useless.

Re:and then it happens

[LordHatrus]

Actually, I think they have nicer pipes for cheap in Korea... at least South Korea... AND WHOSE DISSING MA 300 B4UD OF L337N355??? DIE DIE DIE!!!!

Re:and then it happens

[Fussen]

It's Funny Cause It's 300-BAUD!!

Re:and then it happens

[Sycraft-fu]

Amusing, but probably close to the truth. North Korea is NOT well connected to the Internet. It wouldn't be hard to essentially block them off entirely, which I'm sure would happen in the event of a real, government sponsored, cyber attack.

Re:and then it happens

[Anonymous Coward]

If they start hacking us, we will cut their phone line, this rendering their sole 300-baud modem useless.

Just make sure you cut the right phone line. Otherwise the Seoul 300-baud modem will be rendered useless.

(Sorry, couldn't resist!)

ironically, more truth than sarcasm

[lingqi]

As flamebait and as troll the parent is, considering that this is the N.Korean OFFICAL page and their central news agency is hosted in japan... I really do wonder about the amount of computers in the country.

you have to realize that most companies are forbidden to export anything to N.K. And to think the latency of the last explosion getting out - it's no wonder as there are 1.1million phone lines in a country of 22.7m people. cellular phone availability data is nonexistant, and all the phone are routed through beijing and russia.

sort of to answer the origial story, though - N.K. probably is using china's networks to get online not necessarily because china have anything to do it other than just selling them bandwidth (just like MCI could be selling bandwidth to western malicious internet personalities without knowledge). I do wonder if the said hackers have to contend with the firewall of china, though...

Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm

[HyperCash]

Dude...I think we just slashdotted a country.

Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm

[HyperCash]

That central news agency page is incredibly funny. The president of Ethiopia supports the cause of N. Koreans? I'm sure he does as all the people of either country want is food. And the mongolian leader thing. Oh yeah, and the U.S. is out to "topple the socialist system chosen by its people." Yeah, because the people had so many choices.

-HC

Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm

[Netsnipe]

Well either the North Koreans aren't the ones designing their own homepage, or they can't even set the timezone right on their own computers:

<!-- Fireworks 3.0 Dreamweaver 3.0 target. Created Tue Jul 02 19:38:55 GMT+0200 (Romance Daylight Time) 2002 -->

Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm

[MichaelSmith]

Dude...I think we just slashdotted a country.

Yes, it is getting a bit slow, isn't it?

Maybe that is the answer. Just keep filling their few external lines with crap so they can't transmit anything

Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm

[t35t0r]

why is korea-dpr.com in spain ..barcelona?

Common sense

[Anonymous Coward]

It says they were infected with viruses. This seems to suggest they are running a Windows OS. If the stakes are so high they should be running a more secure OS such as Unix or Linux. If I leave my doors and windows unlocked in my home and someone breaks in, yes they are wrong for doing it, however it may not have happend if I were to have made it more difficult.

Re:Common sense

[Zonnald]

That's Crap.

I found my dad's car had been broken into the other day, it was locked. Sure it didn't have the patented "Club" lock on, and it was parked in the street in front of my place. But why exactly do I have to make it more difficult.

On the other hand my cousin is encouraged by his Insurance company NOT to lock the house - so they only have to replace 'things' and not repairs to doors and windows.

Let's all make an effort from now on to do some good.

Re:Common sense

[Zonnald]

Thank you for the link.

Whilst I am here - perhaps I can suggest Rotary to you - but remember some of the more wise members are a little stayed in their ways.

It is up to the younger members to get in and start making changes that will see Rotary ahead for the next 100 years.

And if you are serious then please don't post AC so that you can be modded up

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

awwwwww norty cynikal ;)

nm, you won't be a troll forever, unless...

Curriculum at Hacker U.?

[JaredOfEuropa]

I wonder what they teach these hackers in a 5 year course? L33tspeak 101? (or would that be lol?). Maybe they have an advanced economics course in peddling h3rb4l v!4gra and running Nigerian scams too, to bring in money for the Glorious Cause

Re:Curriculum at Hacker U.?

[Kjella]

I'll try a completely uneducated guess:

• Introduction to security exploits. What it is, common forms of exploits, how to find them (security bulletins etc.), what "rooting" a machine means.
  
• Finding exploits. This means mapping bulletins to binary code, or to decompile binary code to find potential exploits.
  
• Executing exploits. How to use an exploit (e.g. a buffer overflow) to maximize the effect. Some exploits are crash bugs, others are full takeover-bugs.
  
• Covert operation. An exploited machine should not reveal its presence to its users (think netstat/task manager/ps).
  
• Intelligence gathering. An exploited machine can easily be used to sniff passwords, authorization codes and various compromised information.
  
• Decryption and disassembly. As a special subset of the last subject, you may need to log passwords and execute encryption programs to access information (military equivalent of pgp files, encrypted containers etc.)
  
• Introduction to IDS. What an IDS is, how it operates and its weaknesses. This is a prerequisite for the next subject.
  
• Covert contamination. An exploited machine should be used to infect other machines (as it is already inside the security perimeter), but in such a manner that it isn't obvious.
  
• Information extraction. If the point is to have a sustained intelligence gathering in a hostile host, you need a covert way of extracting information on a regular basis.
  
• Tamper-proofing. If an infected machine is dissected, you don't want to reveal how it works. This would include encryption in memory, self-destruct possibilities (unless trapped in a VM) and so on.
  
• Stealth remote control. Most likely, any such exploit would include a backdoor for remote access. This needs to be invisible, as e.g. with secret knocks or a similar system. Also routing through several compromised systems to circumvent many layers of security.

That is just some of the subjects I can imagine. I'm sure there's more. And these are all the high-level subjects. At the lower level, you'd need skill in low-level programming (assembler, most likely), network programming, encryption, low level IO (sniffers) and many other subjects to fill it up. That's easily a 5-year program.

Kjella

Re:Curriculum at Hacker U.?

[Jacek Poplawski]

I wonder what they teach these hackers in a 5 year course?

Reading Slashdot (including all comments), nearly 18h/daily.

In capitalist USA

[Eudial]

Hackers train THEMSELVES!

Re:In capitalist USA

[Anonymous Coward]

In capitalist USA, hackers have been replaced by whiny pimple-faced script kiddies.
-r

Re:Quiz Time !! Help pls!

[quizboy]

whew! thanks!
that was quick!
Could you explain the answer a little more... What does arthu have with "hello dave".
what is hello dave.....
{ i do know satellite was arthurs idea...)

compare Korea with Iran

[Jacek Poplawski]

Someone asked here "is there North Korea Linux Group". This is interesting question. I am active member of ORKUT. I was really suprised when someone from Iran added me as friend. I was even more suprised when I realized how many people from Iran are in Orkut. Country which is called "part of Axis of Evil" has Free Internet Access - greatest invention ever. What about North Korea? Nothing. There are no people from N.Korea in Internet. You can find official websites or information about N.Korea, but you can't concact with anyone. You can't talk with people from N.Korea. It is one big prison. Even Iran is heaven in compare to N.Korea.

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[ghostlibrary]

> I was even more suprised when I realized how many people from Iran are in Orkut.

Or how many sponsors of the Anasair X-Prize were Iranian, for that matter (the Ansaris are Iranian!) Guess the axis of evil 'accidentally' sponsored the first commercial astronaut in the US. How... evil?

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[mumblestheclown]

Umm, dumbass.. the Ansaris were born in Iran, but made their fortunes in the USA. Even Bush wouldn't claim that it's your place of birth or ethnicity that makes you part of the 'axis of evil.' The Iranian government in no way had anything to do with the X-prize.

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[dema]

I was even more suprised when I realized how many people from Iran are in Orkut. Country which is called "part of Axis of Evil" has Free Internet Access - greatest invention ever. What about North Korea? Nothing. There are no people from N.Korea in Internet.

Did you just come to the conclusion that Orkut == the Internet? *shivers* I would hate the Internet if it were that terribly slow all the time.

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[ghostlibrary]

> The Iranian government in no way had anything to do with the X-prize.

Sure it did... it let its people emigrate. NK doesn't seem to do that.

Given how much profiling is being done to find terrorists of arabic descent, you might want to be careful about saying the US gov't doesn't claim place of birth as making you potentially evil, by the way. That's what profiling does.

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

Country which is called "part of Axis of Evil" has Free Internet Access - greatest invention ever.

How is censored internet the "greatest invention ever?"

http://www.opennetinitiative.net/bulletins/004/

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually most, If not all of the so-called Iranian people on Orkut are actually from developing countries (Mainly Brazil) trying to make some sort of political statement.

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[KjetilK]

Well, yes, Iran has probably among the more vibrant blogging communities in the world. I follow a few Iranian blogs regularily. Hoder is a good starting point. And authorities are cracking down on it, pissing all the kids off. Iran is strange, on one hand, the majority of the people are highly educated, they understand democracy, and there are lots of good people in higher positions, in universities, for example. So, if one were to start a democratic revolution in the Middle East, what one should do is start cooperation with the progressive forces in Iran. Contrary to Iraq, you could actually come with a lot of support to people without aiding the mullahs. A good example of this is the CERN /Iran collaboration. With these forces gaining status and strength in society, a peaceful transition to democracy would be imminent. Many of these leading figures is of the clear opinion that current US policy has been a severe setback.

Re:compare Korea with Iran

[Anonymous Coward]

the majority of the people are highly educated

A minority are highly educated, but the educated are universally westernized and seeking to overthrow their theocracy.

from
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbo ok/print /ir.html

Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 79.4%
male: 85.6%
female: 73% (2003 est.)

Sorry NTK.net!

[tod_miller]

Another link to ntk.net that I was just on a second ago before reading this:

http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html :-)

Steve 'Monkey Boy' Ballmer [please news-wires, use his official title!]

In other news...

[retards]

Iraq has weapons of mass destruction according to former exiles now running the country.

This is just FUD by South Korea against it's arch enemy, and even if it isn't, so what? How many crackers are employed by the CIA? The Mossad? MI5? Or even the RIAA & MPAA?

It amazes me that the general public of Western countries and their allies are so goddamn afraid that these absolutely piece of shit countries that can't even feed their own populace are any threat to anyone save mentioned populace.

ANY Western country could kick serious ass in Afghanistan, Iraq or North Korea (though not with zero casualities). These countries have no tech. None. How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?

They are the human wool pulled over our eyes to keep us from looking at our own corrupted civilzation and political system.

Rant over.

Re:Quiz Time !! Help pls!

[REBloomfield]

2001: Space odyssey

Re:Quiz Time !! Help pls!

[quizboy]

Thanks.But still what is hello dave...in space odyssey..?it occurs in book?

Economy measure?

[jcr]

That's got to be cheaper than a nuclear weapons program...

-jcr

I'm game!

[Gentlewhisper]

Ok, where do I sign up?

Re:Quiz Time !! Help pls!

[Anonymous Coward]

Arthur C Clark wrote "2001 A Space Odessy". HAL, the computer in the film, gives the famous quote "Open the pod bay doors Dave".
(Add one letter to each letter in HAL and you have ...)

Arthur C Clark also invented geostationary satellites.

NK is not a state...

[killbill!]

It is a criminal organization that happens to control a territory and exploit starving slaves.

It routinely abducts Japanese and South Korean citizens just to keep NK spies trained (Kim, a movie buff, also had a director kidnapped so he could direct movies for his own enjoyment!).
Moreover, NK is the world's largest counterfeit money manufacturer and a major drug manufacturer. Oh, and it's into exporting weapons and missiles, too.

It is not only into illegal exports. It's also into massive-scale blackmail. It's been into nuclear blackmail for quite some time. Turning to cyber-blackmail was only a logical step.
When one is desperate for money, any buzzword-compliant threat will do.

This is not a country. This is SPECTRE.
Maybe the CIA should start training killer angora cats ;p

Re:NK is not a state...

[replicant108]

This stuff sounds awfully like the nonsense that was fed to the public prior to the invasion of Iraq.

I think there are reasons to be sceptical of such stories - especially in the absence of any kind of evidence.

Re:NK is not a state...

[funtime]

If push came to shove, the Norks would use US troops like toilet paper. Like the Chechens, they would love to die more than the enemy loves to live. Enter at your own peril.

Re:NK is not a state...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Moreover, NK is the world's largest counterfeit money manufacturer and a major drug manufacturer. Oh, and it's into exporting weapons and missiles, too."

The US produces lots of drugs (I don't think it exports them though), and sells lots of weapons.

"It's also into massive-scale blackmail. It's been into nuclear blackmail for quite some time."

Also a US speciality. And the NSA is very likely to have it's own team of "crackers".

It's not a nice regime, sure, but some of your objections to it are silly.

Re:NK is not a state...

[jotaeleemeese]

Here you go:

-
Kidnapping of foreigners:.

-Movie: google for Pulgasari (or North Korea Godzilla movie), that should give you some interesting leads.

-Please goolg efor North Korea and the words misiles export trade. That shuld get you started.

Finally, paranoia should be fought, but you can't call yourslef skeptical before even attempting to corroborate the information put in front of you.

Re:NK is not a state...

[replicant108]

you can't call yourslef skeptical before even attempting to corroborate the information put in front of you

Unfortunately life is too short to investigate every outrageous claim made about official enemies.

However, if you will trouble yourself to provide evidence, I will trouble myself to read it.

Re:S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Cracke

[MrFreshly]

And I thought we were considered "round eye"...not "cracker"...

NK hackers

[pedicabo]

A 5 year university programme. That's a couple of years longer than a BSc in the UK. So roughly equivalent to BSc Hons plus a year postGrad. They ought to be bloody good. When did this pgramme start? Are there any graduates? It's not exactly a secret, is it? How come South Korea has only just noticed?

Re:NK hackers

[ViolentGreen]

The number of years of the program is not the only factor in determining the quality of education. If GWB taught a 10 year physics program, would that make it the best in the world?

South Korean Accuracy

[TAiNiUM]

Didn't the South Koreans also report a huge North Korean explosion and mushroom cloud that made everyone whisper "nukes"?

I think the South Koreans are a great bunch of people but I wouldn't believe all of their news without double-checking the accuracy.

Re:South Korean Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Where was the inaccuracy? It was knee-jerk people in the USA getting all uppity about the possibility of a nuke test.

This just in...

[MachDelta]

AOL is now being formally recognized by world governments as a modern military superpower. Claiming to have a lineup of over 10,000 highly trained "leet hackers", AOL claims it has enough digital firepower to "out-haxx0r" any country on the planet. Tensions are sure to rise among world leaders as they take action in this suprising turn of events.
When reached for comment, George W. Bush was quoted as saying "Well gee them AOL folks rilly seemed nice, what with sendin out em free CDs 'n such, but I guesses, I mean I supposes if they was rilly just a new kinda technuh... technuh... nucular, uh, nucular-logical warfare device - yi'see like a weppin o' mass destrucshun 'n such - then I spozes we're gonna hav'ta bomb the livin daylights outta em varmints."

Elsewhere in the world, France has surrendered and is to be re-named "LOLOLOLOLOLOMG111`". When asked how the newly conquored country would be managed, AOL spokespersons simply pointed out that a small council would be appointed, comprised of the following individuals: :D, ;), ^_^, :P, :X, and o_O.


More news as it unfolds.

Re:This just in...

[xutopia]

why do you have to poke at France? Cause they told you the war was stupid and they were right? Why is it cool to poke at them? Is it the same reason the smart kid in class gets poked at? For a bunch of nerds I feel this behaviour is counter productive.

Re:This just in...

[radish]

I agree. I'm British, so by definition I am supposed to dislike the French. And I do, on a not-very-serious level. They could do with shaving a bit more and eating a bit less garlic, but I could say much worse about most Americans.

With the whole war thing, the French government listened to their people (which is what governments are supposed to do) and declined to be involved. The British government ignored their people and went in anyway. It's looking like they will pay the price for that treason come election time. The evidence is clear now (in fact it always was for many of us) that the war was a farce enacted to further the political and financial interests of Bush and his cronies. Even Rumsfeld admitted as much today. And yet we still insult France for standing up for what was right?

if only it were so simple

[feepcreature]

There seems to be a lot of staggering naivity about the capabilities of nations poorer than the USA.

Sanctions may make it harder for the man in the street to buy computing equipment, but they cannot stop a determined state form getting what is so widely available in the rest of the world. So if North Korea wants hacking hardware, they can get it.

It doesn't really matter how poor the average person is, or how little food or power or money most groups have - if something is important to a dictatorship (like their own personal comfort, or security) it can be generously resourced. Think Saddam's palaces. So they can afford to train to hack.

Don't underestimate educational possibilities. Quality of education has very little to do with GNP - look at the dire state of public schools in the US. Training of the elite can be very effective in less rich countries - the most important thing is usually motivation. Actually, the US system also shows that resources CAN be concentrated to produce pockets of excellence! So if NK wants effective training, it's hardly impossible.

So they could train and resoure a significant number of hackers, if they wanted. The casual complacency of some here reminds me of the attitude of the WWII British in Singapore - just before the Japanese Army cycled round the back of the fortifications and invaded.

On the other hand, North Korea may not have done any of that. Or they may have tried, and been ineffective (though you don't have to be THAT good, to crack lots of systems). It's prudent to take precautions, but daft to panic.

As with any security question, consider what is the problem, whether the solution fixes it, what are the disadvantages of the solution, and whether the tradeoff is worth it. Most sensible precautions are already known - to sensible users and not a few slashdotters ;-)

And it's also worth looking at where the story came from, and when. Just because it's a South Korean defence agency doesn't make it untrue (they are in a better position to understand local threats than many outsiders). And the North is ratcheting up tension, by refusing talks. But beware of spin - both from those releasing the stoy, and those who want a pretext for new "security" measures...

Re:if only it were so simple

[ghostlibrary]

> Sanctions may make it harder for the man in the street to buy computing equipment, but they cannot stop a determined state form getting

Yep. Sanctions (or blowing up power plants during war, et cetera) basically just mean "the populace suffers more, while the army still takes first pick of the resources".

Heck, even in the US currently, military funding is considered seperate from all other programs, and usually passed by Congress as a seperate budget item (often ignoring the rest of the economic picture).

Part of this is pragmatics-- an army requiring X dollars doesn't fight at half-power with half the money, but basically is useless when underfunded significantly. Part of this can also be different pragmatics-- folks with guns get what they want :)

The underlying idea of sanctions is to ultimately make either war/army building too expensive (by crashing their economy past a breaking point), or to motivate the civilian populace to overthrow their own gov't.

Oddly enough, both seem to have been part of the fall of the USSR. But it takes a very, very long time (decades or more) to work that way, and the risk is, when things are close to teetering, the country leaders may decide to declare war just to boost national spirit and redirect the populations attention outward.

Being a country like any other, even the US isn't immune to such tactics.

Clear message

[Anonymous Coward]

So Bush is sending a very clear message here: If you want to be save from our preemptive strikes do everything you can to acquire WMDs as fast as possible.

I don't know if I really feel saver now...

Re:Does NK have 600 computers?

[H8X55]

well - couldn't find out how many computersthey have by CIA Worldbook suggests they only have 1.1 million phone lines. Kinda crappy for a nation of 22 million people.

Should we be using such racial slurs on slashdot?

[geoffrobinson]

I mean does it matter what race North Koreans are training...oops. Nevermind.

me too!

[spectrokid]

the north has a five-year university program for hacker training

Do you think I could get a grant?

Slashdot has..

[Anonymous Coward]

Trained Hundreds of thousands of geeks to Completely wash out any site ( and surrounding sites ) on command that an editors wishes.

Speaking of 1995...

[Hogwash McFly]

South Korea's 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong Il is a huge movie fan, so the training 'tool' being used is probably this. All the South Koreans need to do is make sure their garbage files are well protected.

Re:Speaking of 1995...

[Erik Hollensbe]

Erm....

I mean, how can you knock a movie with Dan Ackroyd in it? .... Oh, I thought you were talking about another shitty movie where a bunch of people click on a horribly over-animated and under-powered "interface" and talk technobabble while referring to it all as being a part of the "network".

I don't know what's funnier, watching those movies, or hearing "experts" talk about how "accurate" it is. You know, like the guys that cheered Trinity on when she used ssh or nmap or whatever in Matrix 2. "Holy crap! It's a terminal! IN a movie! And it's running a real program! Where in the heck did they come up with the budget for that?!"

Quick! Quick! Get the floppy in the mac to upload the virus to cause immense catastophe! Go Sandra Go!

Besides, it's North Korea that isn't controlled by a U.S. Shadow Government.

One thing *is* amazing though - those "computer" scenes in those movies can be done by any 14yo with a pirated copy of Macromedia Flash these days. Think of what those movie wankers paid to get that same quality.

Believeable or not?

[spineboy]

Just beacuse we've heard how Kim Jong Il II, the leader of N. Korea, while playing golf for the FIRST time, shot around 5 (FIVE!!!) holes in one for a total score of around 38 UNDER PAR, doesn't mean that we shouldn't believe anything that they say.

Well I, for one...

[famebait]

-wonder if this heavy North Korean presence on the scene might explain all the lousy english spelling we see from the "h@X0r" crowd.

Of course what they really mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

is 10 crackers all with 52x CD drives from which to load their toolz.

600 script kiddies

[dutt]

how do they think they can create a hacker by educating a person in a university in 5 years?
you don't become a hacker by getting a degree, it's a lifestyle. they will never get a qualified IT army like that. the people which they educate might have knowledge of computer security, but they will have a hard time getting the edge needed to invent and create. always feeding of the scraps which real hackers leave behind.
they'll just be a bunch of crackers using the tools of a script kiddie.

// Ooze out

Soldiers in sandals

[karnat10]

How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?

I am not a soldier (at least not a professional one), but last time I checked there were still some 'soldiers with AK-47s' around Baghdad.

N. Korea has been /.'ed

[OffTheLip]

Posting articles about a low tech country like N. Korea is a very effective DOS. We won't hear from any of those crackers for months now...

Poor security?

[j.leidner]

South Korea is particularly vulnerable to cyber-crime because it has the world's highest usage of broadband services and relatively poor levels of internet security.

Is there any evidence to back up the claim that Koreans have poorer IT security than, say, the US or Europe?

--
Try Nuggets , our mobile meta-search engine. We answer your questions via ordinary SMS.

Re:Poor security?

[Bull999999]

Is there any evidence to back up the claim

Many slashdotters believe that they are the center of the universe and whatever they claim are true just because they said so, and everyone who does not believe them are either stupid or a liar.

I'm sure they didn't train long

[sl4shd0rk]

1) Open Outlook Express 2) Attatch Malware 3) Fill in address field 4) Hit Send 5) Tune in to CNN

Let the outsourcing begin

[Anonymous Coward]

When can we start outsourcing our work to a 3rd world country as North Korea? Could be really cheap, for a bit of rice and kimchi those guys will do anything.

Soon this will turn out to be the step that leads to the opening up of N. Korea.

I am curious...

[apostrophesemicolon]

for all the embargoes and sanctions and quotas imposed on North Korea, and besides the assistance from China, where do North Korea get their funding from?
I know they run some black-market businesses but can it fund all the WMD building, hackers training, and not to mention the "godly" dictator's appetite for hot chicks and fine dining?

on a lighter note, we should send that guy from MadTV to quietly replace Jong Il.. :p

Are you kidding me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever get attacked by some script kiddie's botnet? Lots of the comprimised hosts are Korean. Ever run a mail server? Lots of the open relays and proxies are Korean.

i doubt it

[flacco]

from what i've seen on the news, i'd be surprised if there were 600 crackers in all of north korea.

Don't be so sure

[muzeke]

Most of you guys who're talking out of your ass about North Korea have never seen North Koreay, have you?

Actually, neither have I. But a friend of mine is a journalist who's been to North Korea many times. And through his pictures, yes, the majority (99.9999%) are dirt poor; they're mostly starving; some literally eat dirt for dinner; most of the bad things you hear about North Korea are probably true.

However, the remaining .00001% of the elites do have access to some incredible stuff - maybe more so than in most countries where 99.99999% of the people sacrifice so that the remaining few elites do better.

You may be asking: How the f*** did my journalist friend get to see all that shit? He's been there several times and learned how to evade the lazy guards they put on him.

Also, I don't know about Vietnam or other Southeastern, third-world countries, but the Koreans do not take education lightly. As a matter of fact, they are dead serious. Remember, Koreans have a literacy rate hovering around 97%, meaning unless they're blind or mentally retarded, they can read. Some of the programmers I've seen in Korea are the best I've ever seen (just stifled by stupid management). If an astute management gives them the green light to raise hell, they may stir up some serious shit.

And yes, I am Korean.

Re:Don't be so sure

[Pantero Blanco]

How do they have a literacy rate of 97% if 99.9999% of them are so poor they eat dirt for dinner? Or was that 97% referring to just the elite of North Korea, or 97% of the whole of Korea?

Crackers?

[Vampyre_Dark]

They trained 600 white guys to stand around the airport all day so that when people arrive, they think they are in ohio? Oh wait, they are hackers too apparantly. They must take shifts at the local slaughterhouse.

Re:S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Cracke

[AchilleTalon]

You may laugh if you want, they are planning to spread them on pea soups.

Helluva lot of rednecks -- sounds suspicious

[IronChefMorimoto]

Man -- that many crackers -- in a North Korean military unit. Lot of rednecks to be concentrated in one place. Sounds to me like the country's going to infiltrate a NASCAR race and start stealing chassis designs from major race teams. They could use the engine designs for something too.

Maybe they're considering a first strike invasion of Atlanta. They're terribly misinformed, if that's the case, 'cause north Georgia here is a little more Northern transplants than crackers these days. If I were an insane little Korean communist dictator, I'd be concentration my cracker infiltration force in Charlotte. They're more likely to blend in, what with all the NASCAR teams based there. Lots of Earnhardt Jr. fans = lots of cover.

There's always Alabama, too, I suppose. But even crackers don't really claim 'bama as their own these days. ;-)

I wonder if they'll show up wearing Cabela Winter 2004 orange camo and riding in on jacked up late model Ford F-150s. ;-)

IronChefMorimoto

P.S. - This had me cracking (no pun intended) up this morning, 'cause I grew up in all these various places. 600 Korean crackers -- LOL!

Re:Helluva lot of rednecks -- sounds suspicious

[Monofilament]

HAhahahahaha. No kidding, When i first read the article's headline I really did think they meant Cracker as the ethnic slur and not as a "Code Cracker".

Seriously I'm jealous you beat me to this post.

Makes me regret...

[tukkayoot]

The comments in this story make me regret that the geek campaign to contrive and use a term to distinguish the difference between a programming/tweaker enthusiast and a malicious computer user.

The word "cracker", as it applies to people who break into networks, ect., just sounds dumb. It makes you think of something you dip in your chili, or a skinny white boy (which is probably an apt description of most computer "hackers" and "crackers").

I mean, the term is so silly, that half the comments to a story with a headline is like this is jokes about the use of the word "cracker."

I say you do-gooding hackers out there give up, and just share the word meaning with your script kiddie and black hat counterparts. The "cracker" word has completely failed to gain traction with non-techies, and I doubt this will ever change.

YES SIR GENERAL SIR!!

[Mordaximus]

These countries have no tech. None. How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?

You're right General! That worked amazingly well in Vietnam! The US really kicked that backwards low tech piece of shit country didn't it! The first war on Iraq kept them quiet FOREVER! Heck, everything is under control in Iraq and Afghanistaneven as we speak!

It is very difficult for an army that uses conventional tactics and tries to be mindful of the Geneva Convention and the Rules of Engagement to combat a group using guerilla tactics.

I'd suggest you read the Seven Pillars of Wisdom by TE Lawrence (of Arabia) before spewing your expert opinion on military strategy.

It's soooo scary

[ellem]

they have a few guys who can move the red bead on the third row and you wouldn't even realize it then your calculation would be off by 100!

Reality check!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

This is just FUD by South Korea against it's arch enemy, and even if it isn't, so what? How many crackers are employed by the CIA? The Mossad? MI5? Or even the RIAA & MPAA?

That's not really the point. You have to be lucky every time. They only have to be lucky once to hurt you. Given the number of viruses and worms that have taken out PCs on a large scale and cost the US economy (amongst others) probably billions of dollars in down-time, it's pretty clear that however many L337 Hax0rz are employed by the governments in the West, it's not enough to stop everything all the time.

ANY Western country could kick serious ass in Afghanistan, Iraq or North Korea (though not with zero casualities). These countries have no tech. None. How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?

May I suggest that you consider the results of US military actions everywhere from Vietnam to Iraq before casting aside poorer countries so disdainfully? In open warfare, of course they'd be toasted by better trained, better equipped forces. In a gorilla war set against today's climate of terrorism and suicide bombers, sadly the story can easily be different.

Re:Reality check!

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I wrote:

In a gorilla war set against today's climate of terrorism and suicide bombers, sadly the story can easily be different.

So, hopefully before anyone else points it out... No, I am not proposing invading North Korea with gorillas, and yes, I can spell "guerrilla". Usually.

Mis-interpreted cracker

[Knightmare]

My first thought when I was reading that was "Why is it a news story that somebody trained 600 white people? And I wonder what they trained them to do?" Silly me...

Everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

Read both about memetics and Virilio. In particular, read Virilio's The Information Bomb.

Logwatch concurs

[wde]

FWIW, I've been steadily hit for about the past 5 weeks by IP's from apnic, mostly N. Korea, attempting to gain access via SSH to root and non-root accounts. This adds an interesting bit of explanation to it. Hmmmm...

Re:Logwatch concurs

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen the same thing, as I'm sure many people have. From what I've read on it its a varient of an old SSHD brute force attack. Note that most of the passwords it trys are pretty dumb, like accountname/accountname.

May be, the South Koreans need to clean up their

[mi]

... universities first?

I'm not sympathetic towards the South Koreans complaining about computer crimes -- thanks to the vast number of spam-relays in the country...

Of the 5366 IP-addresses currently blacklisted by SKeM on my server, plenty (362 as I press "Submit", but still counting) are from South Korea. About 10 are from Chung-Ang University in Seoul (165.194/16), for example.

Not that their private sector is any better.

Mind you, these are not the IPs, that were once hijacked long ago -- SKeM automatically removes stale entries after two weeks -- these really are very recent spam sources.

It's a sad day in the US...

[Anita Coney]

When Asia even kicks our asses in criminal behavior!

Lost? to the NKs??

[HBI]

The only reason North Korea wasn't wiped off the map was the following:

1. China intervened as MacArthur was about to reach the Yalu - ie, the western border of North Korea, and drove him back to the 38th parallel in mid-winter.

2. Truman chose not to invade China in response. This was governed primarily by the nuclear threat and the proximity to the Soviet Union which might be likely to intervene at that time.

Make no mistake about it: North Korea was obliterated and took many years to recover from the utter defeat it had suffered, if it has in fact ever recovered.

here's a thought:

[torpor]

Maybe WESTERN MEDIA is using this as a FUD tool?

Ever thought of that, eh? Have you? HAVE YOU?!!

Its handy, all this enemy-making placement in modern media publications. Makes people really seethingly detest each other, and we know how much cash that equals...

Hey, here's a thought. Y'know when the commie pinko scum call us honorable Westies "Running Dogs"?

Well .. THIS IS WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT! Yip, yip, yip!!

I'm a little offended by this article...

[sadcox]

Being politically correct, the headline should be
"S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 White Trash."

We've fought too hard for too long to be slapped in the face with these antiquated slurs.

no problemo

[blooba]

this one's easy. all that nk had to do was teach some nk teenager decent english, and then smuggle him into the states as a foreign exchange student from sk. in the states, he'll hang out with the hackers at school, infiltrate their "clubs", and learn the tricks of the hacker trade.

when this spy returns to nk, he teaches a few classes on what he learned in the states, and voila, 600 "trained" nk hackers.

or, teach a bunch of nk teenagers english, and let them loose on the uncensored internet. let them cruise the chat rooms where the hackers hang out. they can learn a lot just by making a few choice contacts on the internet. they can also learn a lot just by studying the materials currently available on the internet. like /. for example!

There is probably a better way to do this...

[museumpeace]

but I use Visual Route to get a location [when DNS traceback hasn't been compromized] of the IP address from which I am being attacked. SOUTH Korea, especially considering its smaller population, is over represented among the attempts to feel up my firewall. I imagine that if I were running Linux instead of win2K, I'd have some free tool to see where all the wierd FTPs, Telnets and pings are coming from. I don't have a lot of confidence that I have run the culprit to ground. I am open to suggestions for better ways to finger these f__kers so I can rat them out to their service providers.
If the Bill of Rights specified we Americans had the right to bear arms because there was, at the time of its writing, both mistrust of a standing army and the assumption that an armed citizenry was the best pool from which to draw a DEFENSE force, then shouldn't our 21st century Americans, in addition to a shotgun in a rack near the back door, have a firewall and a set of trace back tools wired to homeland security's armada of DOS attack servers? I mean, if I fed them an IP address, couldn't a server farm, operated by the US for retaliatory and first strike purposes, blitz the bogies' server until smoke was coming out of the DNS proximate to the culprit?
Oh, right, I keep forgetting that the current administration has no clue, no imagination and for the time being, no senior staff for overseeing a defense of our IP infrastructue:-

We have scientists who can turn the Earth's axis!

[arhar]

Reminds me of a Russian politician named Zhirinovsky, who besides being batshit insane, is a very funny guy. Last year he warned USA not to fuck with Iraq or Russia, and he something along the lines of 'if you fuck with us, we have scientists who can bend the Earth's axis so America will be flooded.'

no way to /. Korea, too

[Eisvogel]

first let's check the details domain: korea-dpr.com a-record: 62.15.138.202 inetnum: 62.15.135.0 - 62.15.139.255 netname: masDSL route: 62.15.0.0/16 descr: Jazz Telecom S.A. Global Spanish ISP country: ES mhhh, don't think you'll /. Spain, do you!? Wonna suggest any other N.K. domains :)

hmm

[elementus]

I find it kind of odd that North Korea would train crackers. They're communists, aren't they trying to contain information from the people? Crackers can find out mostly any info that they want. I'm guessing that their computers have been bugged.

In A.D. 2004 War was beginning

[Jakhel]

UN: What happen ?
South Korea: Somebody set up us the bomb.
South Korea: We get signal.
South Korea: What !
UN: Main screen turn on.
South Korea: It's You !!
North Korea: How are you gentlemen !!
North Korea: All your base are belong to us.
North Korea: You are on the way to destruction.
South Korea: What you say !!
North Korea: You have no chance to survive make your time.
North Korea: HA HA HA HA ....

Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

North Korea has 600 highly trained hackers? How does that stack up to 1/2 million badly trained script kiddies? I don't know which would be worse to be targetted by but I'm day to day more concerned about the 500 million unpatched windows drones.

none the less - N. Korea has 600 hackers? So what - we can just cut their net pipe... Bye bye hackers...

Trained crackes

[BlindRobin]

Ritz do you think ? or shrimp ?

Related or Coincidence?

[div_2n]

Just a couple of days ago I received a few phishing e-mails disguised to look like CitiBank e-mails that pointed to servers based in China. The e-mails originated from China as well. I even did some of the work for the FBI and sent full registration info for those IP addresses.

I was quite disappointed when I tried to report it to the FBI and I got what was clearly and automated response that said, "This is not an automated response."

Also recently I was privy to a situtation where a computer in a school system was acting VERY strange and typing text in Word on its own that seemed half gibberish and half not but with text that could almost be confused for terrorist communications. The school system called the FBI and gave them the IP of the machine. The FBI said they were monitoring it to try to determine the cause. The only problem? It was a private IP address and impossible to monitor remotely.

I understand that the FBI probably guessed (quite correctly IMO) that the computer was infected with one of the new worms that uses the dictation engine, but they told the school they were monitoring which was a lie. Additionally, they sent me an e-mail that said it wasn't automated when it so clearly was. No wonder we had intelligence failures leading up to 9/11.

Re:Related or Coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You're quite a hero aren't you? Maybe you should stop posting to slashdot and go fight crime.

Re:Related or Coincidence?

[museumpeace]

Since the FBI is asleep at the switch AND covering up about their indifference and ineptitude, perhaps my suggestion that the US develop an IP combat capability and use the vigilence of its own citizens would not be so nutty after all.

Re:Related or Coincidence?

[slashdot_commentator]

At least you got an automated response. When I send phishing email notices to the FBI NY office, I don't even get an acknowlegement. (Although I got a nice phone call once from the Agent-In-Charge out in Hawaii, when I tracked down a phishing server out there. Too bad I lost my cellphone before I could get the voicemail off the number.)

Re:Related or Coincidence?

[Hellsbells]

I read an article a while back about PCs that were being shipped with XP, with speech recognition enabled, but no microphone plugged in, so that when they ran Word, noise would be picked up from the mic input and write garbage words to the screen.
People thought that their computers were haunted.

600 Crackers! Come on down here, boy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Down here on the farm we got 600 crackers per county! We'll show those rice eaters a thing or two about crackin!

North Korea: CARELESS

[prell]

They usually always leave them sitting by the barracks. Just sneak a Colonel Burton in there and we can be regaling each other with stories by nightfall!

For a second I was starting to wonder.....

[poofmeisterp]

...why a bunch of white people were moving there all of a sudden, and why the author or report was so forwardly racist.
Then I actually read the article.

geeky /. response

[tod_miller]

I think you will find that grandparent post uses a more adaptive algorithm *pushes glasses up nose* and can lookup word aliases and also provide character reordering and event prediction (locked caps).

Whilst parent post is a mere random 1:1 letter symbol lookup that uses a bollean flag to determine how large the lookup data is.

*silence* oh I see you were joking... I have gone and published this in the ACM website too... feel so silly...

to make up for it, I wrote a perl script that uses SOAP to connect to google and groups.google and does realtime lookups on current jibe talk or selected dialects and does a quantization approach and entropy coding to provide accurate and hilarious results.

Sourceforge project

I also wrote an AI interface which makes its own blog, twice daily:

here

the US......

[zogger]

...IS "at war" with north korea. We've had a truce, but no legal technical end to the war since it first started. It's quite strange actually. The war was based on a UN decision. We have had sporadic "truce talks" as long as I can remember. The major shooting war stopped (more or less) once UN forces made it to the red chinese border and indications were good that they could continue the push. China used quite a lot of it's soldiers as "volunteers" to assist NK, and in the early stages of the war were fairly successful, almost routing the US and other UN forces.

It gets more complicated than that of course, interesting subject. I've always considered it to be the worlds major flashpoint for initiation of widespread nuclear warfare, as there is little in the way of conventional weapons we could bring to bear that would defeat north korea easily if any hostilities resumed large scale, they are just too well dug in and have so many armaments and the distances involved are so short that it would require multiples of nukes and bunker busters and whatnot to make a dent in what they have. It's not that they have just amazing modern technology, it's that they have just a huge amount of older technology that isn't vulnerable to any sophisticated jamming or other buck rogers high tech neutralization. They are diggers, build deep hardened bunkers and tunnels, and have been doing so for 50 years now non stop.

Here is a synopsis of the situation from a korean viewpoint

The level of credibility

[stefaanh]

I wonder if anyone stands still at the fact that many of the classic press' articles do not contain relevant links to support their statement, (except when those links seem to be there only to support those statements ;-)).
No facts, no webpages, no resumés, nothing. Just confidential sources and the like.
Even Wired had more supporting links in the good ol' days.
At least on slashdot you get modded up when you add extra referencial material to articles and comments.
So FT: modded down for me. FUD ratio: high. Noise ratio: high. Signal ratio: low
Spyware has no borders to deal with.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[TreadOnUS]

alone.

In most cases the real cause is something political or economic. If a country threatens another economically or politically, the threatened country may react.

In this case, N. Korea would have to ask itself if it really wants war with the U.S.. Attacking our ability to survive economically would most likely be an act of war. I don't think N. Korea wants war with the U.S., it's a no-win situation for both sides. Their goals with this is probably just more leverage and another type of cold war defense. Having the capablity to launch a cyber attack is a form of self-defense.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[sadler121]

First off, technically we are still at war with N. Korea. Second, We would get our collective asses kicked if we went into Korea, and even IF we push back the N. Koreans all the way to China's border, whats to keep China and there million man army from getting twitchy and launching a counter attack on the US like they did the last time??

War benefits no one, and especially with Dubyia in office, all bets are off to any logical resolution if N. Korea does launch a cyber attack, but the US will lose HANDS DOWN, a lot worse than the N. Koreans, if we get into a real war over there.

Obligatory Joke: Besides why would we go over there they don't have any oil...

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[mikeee]

Not that I agree with everything you're saying, but you are making W's point:

There won't be any real solution the the N Korea problem unless the Chinese are on-board with it.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[ethanms]

the US will lose HANDS DOWN

One or two larger bombs and they are gone... we may lose a battle, but not the war.

Once this Jong guy dies we have a chance to turn them into a "normal" country like S. Korea...

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[the_mad_poster]

Assuming you're talking about the statements from the debate, and assuming you're implying that Dubya and Kerry don't share views on that point, I might note that niether one of the candidates suggested that China shouldn't be a crucial part of the talks. They differ on whether or not China can be kept in the talks if bi-lateral talks are opened.

Dubya, being a divisive numbskull who actively sought to destroy what little political relations exist between N. Korea and the U.S. knows that he could never keep China onboard by opening bilateral talks. In addition, since he basically labeled N. Korea as a potential U.S. target of military interest, he knows that Kimmy Chimmy Chonga will just walk away from him in bilateral talks.

Kerry, taking the position that it's not in the best interest of the U.S. to run around the neighborhood childishly insulting all the creepy loner kids and putting gum in their hair, thinks he can keep N. Korea at the table with China if bilateral talks are opened.

Whether you or the other voters think he can do it or not is an entirely different story.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Once this Jong guy dies we have a chance to turn them into a "normal" country like S. Korea...

It's a common fallicy to demonize the leader. Jong only has power because there's huge structure under him. Cut of the head and it will grow another one. Kill the structure and the country turns to chaos. Look at Iraq. It's not easy to replace a government.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

One thing W doesn't understand is there is no way to keep China out of it. Suppose we start the bilateral talks with N. Korea. China will not sit idly by as the US makes them look ineffective.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[mikeee]

On the contrary, that's exactly the point.

The only possible outcomes of US-NK talks are
a) nothing
b) we pay them off, and they pretend not to make nukes for a while.

Possible outcomes of US-China-NK talks also include:
c) China tells NK to sit down, shut up, and quit the nuke business.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Then that's the opposite of what W said in the debates. He rejects a bilateral talk, because he doesn't want to disturb the current situation, which has China on board. He thinks China will walk away, and I guess that you agree with me that the President is wrong, and China will not walk away. They will still be there to try to influence and participate in the bilateral talks. There's no reason that we can't also talk to China about this. It's silly to pursue our current course, since it's obviously not working.

This is what the President said about bilateral talks:

BUSH: Again, I can't tell you how big a mistake I think that is, to have bilateral talks with North Korea. It's precisely what Kim Jong Il wants. It will cause the six-party talks to evaporate. It will mean that China no longer is involved in convincing, along with us, for Kim Jong Il to get rid of his weapons. It's a big mistake to do that.

We must have China's leverage on Kim Jong Il, besides ourselves.

And if you enter bilateral talks, they'll be happy to walk away from the table. I don't think that'll work.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[mikeee]

No, we disagree. The Chinese are happy with us paying the NK off and getting nothing.

We tried bilateral talks in the 90s, and they didn't work.

Re:Wars are rarely started by acts of bloodshed...

[akadruid]

One or two larger bombs and they are gone... we may lose a battle, but not the war.

Once this Jong guy dies we have a chance to turn them into a "normal" country like S. Korea...


Dubya? What are you doing on Slashdot? Go back to playing Civilisation 9: USA Edition.

Whaaa?

[Greyfox]

What the hell did they train them on? No one's been allowed to sell North Korea anything for as long as I can remember! The most advanced technology they must have in the country would probably be the Apple //! Ooo! Ph33r North Korea or they'll... copy your shit with Copy 2 Plus!

S. Korea working toward Atomic Bomb??

[lcsjk]

"The process has been further complicated by recent revelations that South Korea has enriched a small amount of uranium and separated plutonium in secret experiments during the past 22 years."

Am I the only one who saw that little part of the article? Should that not be cause for more alarm than a few hundred computer crackers? It has not made the TV news or political agenda!

Re:S. Korea working toward Atomic Bomb??

[mikeee]

Did you notice in the Presidential debate, W's comment on the 5-party talks was that

"We think China is now convinced that a non-nuclear North Kor - Korean penninsula, is in their best interest."

The message to the Chinese being, obviously, that if NK gets nukes SK will too; then China won't be the only nuclear power in Asia, so how about leaning a bit on Kim Il.

Re:S. Korea working toward Atomic Bomb??

[danielobvt]

You forgot a country on your list. If that area does experience the proliferation that is expected, Japan would probably join the club as well. Their little fast breeders leave so much plutonium around that the current estimate I have heard was less than 18 months. Once you have the fissionable material its just a fairly simple matter to develope the weapons.

Re:S. Korea working toward Atomic Bomb??

[jasmusic]

Very very interesting; I hadn't thought of that.

South Korea's annual cyberwar warning

[BMcWilliams]

South Korea has regularly issued warnings like this since 1994. What the South Korean government fails to note is that its own military has nearly 200 "computer training facilities" and had trained more than 200,000 "information technicians." What's more, because North Korea's IT infrastructure is very centralized, it's particularly vulnerable to physical attacks.

You missed one...

[gosand]

The problem is that North Korea is both dangerous and oppressive on a scale that makes Iraq look like Luxembourg by comparison.

Please refrain from referring to countries that most Americans don't even know is a country, let alone know anything about it. :-)

You mention many things that make N. Korea very dangerous. If they are training crackers, why would they use them against S. Korea? Wouldn't it make much more sense to attack the largest capitalist country? We have a crazy leader who would have ZERO clue how to fight an information war. They could attack the U.S. in this manner pretty easily. Physically attacking N. Korea would be insanity, as you pointed out they are a more militaristic nation than we are. While they have no real friends, they are kind of like the crazy guy that nobody messes with for fear of what they might do. How could you counter such an information attack? If this story is true, then their government is willing to fund cracking activities - while ours passes garbage like the DMCA that discourages anything remotely related to such activities. With the internet becoming a standard way of doing business, you can bet that it will be the platform for future wars in some way or another. I guess I should trademark the phrase "digital terrrism" now.

Watch that first step, it's a doozy!

[Thud457]

"ir traffic control, hospitals, emergency response, or military weapons. Financial lives could be ruined if banks, investment, or pension instatutions"

None of which have any business being connected to the internet at large. Any jackass that does put mission-cricital services on the internet gets what they deserve.

Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy!

[jotok]

None of which have any business being connected to the internet at large. Any jackass that does put mission-cricital services on the internet gets what they deserve.

This is your answer? Please tell me you're joking. In America, ~300 million people who had nothing to do with the decision would get what that jackass deserved.

Him, and the IT staff who convinced management that everything-over-IP is a good idea.

Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy!

[the_mad_poster]

You're joking, right? What do you expect hospitals to do, isolate a bunch of servers in miscellaneous locations and force people to print and walk medical records from one place to another? Do you expect air traffic control to build it's own cutoff communications medium that only interoperates with other towers and facilities? Do you expect banks to force people to perform all of their transactions in isolated physical locations?

That is probably the dumbest piece of technical input I've ever heard in my entire life, and I'm not the least bit surprised that it came from a clueless /bot. The logistics and cost behind isolating ever single institution would be staggering and would go against the core promise of the worldwide communication capabilities of the internet anyway. The solution isn't to isolate every damn thing, it's to make sure that those things are sufficiently locked down. From a technical perspective, in fact, much of the banking industry IS well protected. The human attack vectors may not be very solid, but the technical ones, largely, are.

Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy!

[Krondor]

What do you expect hospitals to do, isolate a bunch of servers in miscellaneous locations and force people to print and walk medical records from one place to another? Do you expect air traffic control to build it's own cutoff communications medium that only interoperates with other towers and facilities? Do you expect banks to force people to perform all of their transactions in isolated physical locations?

Umm private networks? This happens all the time. In fact, I know for a fact the auto industry uses ANX net which is basically a seperate Internet for the auto companies, their suppliers, and finanial institutions. It's probably all done over clear channel (not the communications firm). It's isolated from hacks on the Internet, they'd have to originate from a node on ANX net. I'm sure many other large industries now do this. Isolation works so they do it. Locking down Internet systems works too.. but why not combine them. Saying that the public needs to access these systems is ludicrous if you have the financial means to get around that.

Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy!

[the_mad_poster]

The public has both a need and desire for convenient access to its medical records. It has neither the need nor the desire for convenient access to business-specific information about the auto industry. In addition, there is no reason that the systems that we have now could not be properly secured with a much, much lower investment than the network privatization of entire sectors. On top of that, if you privatize your sector, you just need to invest that much more money into physically securing your systems because you now have much less capability to do damage control and routing, and smaller, more targeted attacks can more easily bring down your systems.

Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy!

[Krondor]

The public has both a need and desire for convenient access to its medical records. It has neither the need nor the desire for convenient access to business-specific information about the auto industry.

This is a discussion about the damage to mission critical infrastructure. The public's convenient online access to medical records is not mission critical to the US infrastructure. The financial transactions and systems of something like the auto industry are mission critical. If you said it was hospital prescription systems, patient billing, and the like that could be slightly more important.

On top of that, if you privatize your sector, you just need to invest that much more money into physically securing your systems because you now have much less capability to do damage control and routing, and smaller, more targeted attacks can more easily bring down your systems.

While this is true, chaining your critical systems to a public network has much higher risks then isolation. Isolation does provide for routing around damage (with the proper money and design), and generally requires physical access to the network for an attack to be played out. It also requires knowledge that those systems exist (but this is a weak argument as obscurity is the worst form of security). I had said that many corporations that become involved in these private networks do have the financial backing, adequate concerns, and general incentive to do this. My point was more or less that it might be harder then people realize for a cyber attack to take down significant portions of the US or World critical systems. I know the Pentagon was discussing isolating all military systems on a seperate network then the Internet as well.

This is SO William Gibson

[tjlsmith]

The obnoxious govt. sweeps their raggety-ass country for any kids with math ability - ships them off to a miraculously clean facility in the ass-end of nowhere - teaches them to use the sparkly porcelain toilet, gives them real food, clean cloths and a warm bed, then after two days of this heaven explains to them that they are going to learn certain stuff here - they don't HAVE to of course, they can go back to their previous barefoot in the cold manure lifestyle any time they want. Being BRIGHT kids, they catch on right away. The thing about countries like this is they can build ONE (1) awesome facility as good as anything anywhere, if they like. It would not be hard to find committed communist academics to teach there - (I remember working at a company with this British kid with a Masters in Comp. Sci. who was a *pathological* Marxist) But it all goes tits up. Lessons start. Math, intro to computers, and lots of political indoctrination. Pretty soon they are on the internet and the sun rises. There's another world out there. Sure, the govt. erects a firewall but, and think about it, these guys are trained to go THROUGH firewalls, right? That's the whole point right? Right? It HAS to go wrong. It HAS to! If the school does it's job they can't stop these kids from surfing the net. If they can't surf the net, they will be infective. They discover Slash Dot. They discover CNN.COM and the BBC. They discover they have been lied to all their lives. Then - they discover PR0N - and there's no going back. Some of them will work for the commies anyway. Others will start cudgeling their brains for a way to get out of NK. Planet Hollywood for them. If the commies are smart they'll start to shop these kids around to troublemakers everywhere the way terrorists do - Irish ex-Green Berets wind up teaching demolitions to Hammas so the IRA can get RPGS for his services (this actually happened) You could wind up with a cynical, atheist, chain smoking ('Destroy America except for Marlboroughs') skinny NK Hacker School grad on site in LA supporting El Quida. Its SO William Gibson.

Re:This is SO William Gibson

[Dogtanian]

The thing about countries like this is they can build ONE (1) awesome facility as good as anything anywhere, if they like.

One site; one target.

If I was the United States, I wouldn't bomb the place; there would be no quicker way to start a war.

However, what if there was an unfortunate outbreak of a particularly nasty disease at the facility? Possibly one where, once it had been spotted, it was already too late, and spread throughout the area...?

Who did this? Could they prove it was deliberate? Not on the basis of one outbreak.

Yes; this would be a very unpleasant means of dealing with the problem. Yes; the people working there would not have been given a fair choice. Unfortunately, given the danger that North Korea poses to the world, and the fact that these people would be working to support such a regime, this pales into insignificance.

Let's not delude ourselves; the only reason North Korea hasn't been invaded before now is (a) Because they have nukes, (b) They pose an immediate threat to the South, and (c) We do *not* want to get into a war with China.

Put simply, this is why we could not bomb the facility; however, a centralised training ground would remain vulnerable, for the reasons described.

Am I being amoral myself here? Possibly. But given the larger picture, I'm not sure we could afford to consider such things.

N.Korea and Bush re-election

[tod_miller]

My guess is Bush will hijack north korea as a means to wni the next round. He will place lots of fear inducing news out (you won't know it is from him)

The level of anxiety will increase, people will vote Bush.

It seems from the link a fellow posted, N Korea seems to be solely focussed on retaliating to a preemptive tsrike from the US.

If the US could back down, and realise that North Korea is better handled politically, then things would improve.

What I cannot find, is anything about N Korea except for thier desire to stop a preemptive US strike.

Why would they attack S Korea? Are they planning to take it over?

I think the idea that N Korea would just 'push a button' at any time without provocation, is a success of the Bush propoganda engine.

There needs to be action, and not lead by the US to diffuse fears. Sending international groups of mediators on a peace visit might help.

they would feel less vunerable with foreign interests in thier country... it takes the pressure of the nuke trigger.

it opens up talks!

Re:N.Korea and Bush re-election

[kosty]

OK, this little tinfoil-helmet comment scored a "1" last time around [on a similar subject]. Maybe this time I'll qualify as "troll" but here goes nothin'...

Look for the threat of cracked elections to be used as a means to postpone -- or invalidate -- same.

Re:N.Korea and Bush re-election

[SunPin]

You're an idiot. I don't like Bush either but, if he wins, he won't win by some conspiracy. It's an inexplicable yet indisputable fact that a dangerous percentage of the country _likes_ Bush just because they want to like their leader.

Re:N.Korea and Bush re-election

[kosty]

>> You're an idiot.
And you're an asshole...

>>I don't like Bush either but, if he wins, he won't win by some conspiracy.

You mean like in 2000? Yeah, I guess he won't NEED to be appointed THIS time. Piss off...

Re:N.Korea and Bush re-election

[SunPin]

You haven't seen the robots walking around? Up until Kerry performance on Monday, I was concerned that Bush might walk his way into a legitimate win. The problem is still there. People exist that like Bush. I can't figure it out and if I could, I'd stop it so spare the personal insult. Your post actually was _idiotic_ because it didn't take reality into account. Of course, if Bush can rig one election, he can rig two. He also hasn't ruled out martial law in the event of a SpanisH October Surprise. Guess what? We can be on the same side and I can tell you that you are missing the bigger picture. Maybe I should have said that instead of calling you an idiot. For that, I apologize.

Re:N.Korea and Bush re-election

[kosty]

Looks like we've started a mini-flame-war that would be better taken outside of the forum. However, I'll continue this inane thread I've started until tossed out the door by moderators. [Please finish the whole post before hitting the > button...]. /snip/
>>People exist that like Bush. I can't figure it out and if I could, I'd stop it so spare the personal insult.

OK, set your > to a couple of posts ago:

>> You're an idiot.

Sort of sets the tone right out of the gate, don't you think? Now, naturally I could 'turn the other cheek,' but I don't take kindly to personal insults and believe, like many here apparently, that one should give as good as one gets...

>>Your post actually was _idiotic_ because it didn't take reality into account.

OK. Me: kettle. You: pot.:

>> It's an inexplicable yet indisputable fact that a dangerous percentage of the country _likes_ Bush just because they want to like their leader.

If that's "reality" then why even bother running against the incumbent?

>>Guess what? We can be on the same side and I can tell you that you are missing the bigger picture.

If you can do it without coming off as an arrogant, condescending prick, -- I often have trouble w/that myself -- then, absolutely, you can.

>>Maybe I should have said that instead of calling you an idiot. For that, I apologize.

Agreed. My apologies for my dick-headed response...

==============
"Now that Bush has accepted the nomination the next step, of course, is the rigging of the voting machines."
--David Letterman

Re:N.Korea and Bush re-election

[SunPin]

Glad we could work out our differences. Peace.

Re:N.Korea and Bush re-election

[tod_miller]

Not a conspiracy, I hope your IQ can fathom that.

Vote swinging -

Bush: "oh lookout, North Korea!"
Voters: "Where?"
Bush: "Over there!! And they are holding a cute puppy, with a nuke strapped to it!"
Voters: "Run for your lives! And vote for Bush!"

You see - a highly plausible chain of events.

Inflation

[data64]

Last time I heard this same news, the number was 500. I guess this is what they mean by the high inflation rate in South East Asia.

North Korea...

[night_flyer]

is doing affirmative action?

In the US

[xtheunknown]

In the US we have millions of crackers. They don't even need training. Wait, you meant the "other" type of cracker.

Never mind.

Blizzard

[Anonymous Custard]

Man, those kids in North Korea must really want Starcraft bad if they're willing to hack into South Korea to play it...

The solution is simple and obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Send in...

TEAM AMERICA!

"Hey terrorists! Terrorize THIS!"

Official North Korean News Agency

[mikeee]

If you haven't seen this, have a look; it reads like an overblown parody of 1984, but it's real.

Korean Central News Agency of Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea

Any government that can publish this with a straight face needs to be overthrown... :(

Deja Vu

[Baby Duck]

I liked this story better the first time I heard it. Back when it was called Splinter Cell.

The U.S. has a lot more to lose...

[TreadOnUS]

hence the huge leverage a capability like this would give N. Korea.

N. Korea would not be hurt by a counter cyber attack and a military attack by the U.S. would not accomplish a change in power like it did in Iraq. Besides the U.S. not being able to 'win', the N. Korea dictatorship would ultimately benefit. They might lose scores of citizens (less mouths to feed) in return for a probable gain in S. Korean territory plus have control over the inevitable huge amount of aid afterwards.

Re:The U.S. has a lot more to lose...

[mOdQuArK!]

N. Korea would not be hurt by a counter cyber attack

Actually, if hacking from NK is determined to be a problem, the most likely solution would be to cut off all access to the Internet from NK (I doubt they have too many redundant connections to the rest of the world). At that point, all the training that those "highly skilled" hackers received will be pretty much worthless, and the rest of the Internet will go about its business.

Re:The U.S. has a lot more to lose...

[TreadOnUS]

Form what I read, it seems the source is from within China.

I'm ignoring your disclaimer, and snarking anyway!

[Thud457]

Edgar Rice Burroughs' FUD aside, gorillas don't wage war. They are gentle, peaceful animals.

Although, if they did, I bet that would be something to see, now wouldn't it?

That's racicist!

[Thud457]

See, it's funny because dem foreigners can't speek gud englich, but they can still work their computational machines.

Oh, wait, I just described slashdot.

meaningful damage

[Frogg]

Its funny how some people seem to think flooding a pipe causes meaningful damage.

It's probably not so funny when a flooded pipe does cause meaningful damage to your business -- as shown by the recent dDOS on Worlpay (and the knock-on effect to businesses using their systems).

I suppose it all depends on your definition of meaningful..

Maybe nobody invited them to join

[name_already_taken]

For those that don't know, Orkut is an invitation-only cyber-clique.

Perhaps the answer is as simple as nobody knows any North Koreans, so they don't get invited to join.

Of course, once they join anything as secretive and subversive as Orkut (even Kim Jong-Il can't get an invite!) they'd probably be subject to torture and execution in North Korea, so they might not stay around for long.

One of Us

[Doc Ruby]

They've got nukes, and they've got info warriors. That's an "advanced country", regardless of the poverty in their countryside - just like the USA.

How?

[jcook793]

How did they train all those white guys? That's amazing.

600 hackers VS. Slashdotting

[Goeland86]

Kim Jong Il might have 600 hackers, but the western world has more script kiddies than that. Wait 'til some kiddo out there decides to write a worm that'll shoot DoS attacks on N Korea's network! That'll be funny, having hackers but no network for them to use!

Hmmm.....

[Erik Hollensbe]

What benefit exactly are a bunch of throw backs from the dukes of hazzard armed with shotguns and banjos going to do for North Korea?

Crackers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where'd they get that many rednecks?

North Korean Link

[diakka]

A friend of mine in China once told me that he saw a map of China's internet backbone and outbound connections. He said that there was only one 4mb link to North Korea. I figure Kim Jong Il probably uses most of that for his porn collection.

Re:North Korean Link

[fbjon]

Really?
So there is some connection.. do you know where I can get info on that link?

Re:North Korean Link

[diakka]

http://www.cnnic.net.cn/images/2004/flash/2004Q2.s wf

This is a link my friend gave me. Sorry for the flash animation and the fact that it's in Chinese. if you move your mouse over the bottom right blue block, you will see a line appear with a "2" that one is for north korea.

Large Explosion in N Korea last month

[Prien715]

Does anyone have any further information about the large explosion in N Korea last month? It seemed like the story dropped off the face of the planet.

The old story is reported here.

Asia has a computing monoculture

[saha]

Most Asian countries have a computing monoculture. South Korea is no exception to that rule. Microsoft's Windows OS probably has 99.95% penetration that country. Although in recent years South Koreans are starting to question the wisdom of being dependent on one OS for much of their commerce and infrastructure, after being badly hit by several internet worms.

Whether you are a Windows advocate or despise using Windows, no single OS should have that kind of pervasiveness. Most Asians know better than to cultivate 100% soyabean or rice as their only crop. Much like the Irish learnt the hard way when the potato famine hit them.

So why is it that goverments are sadly unaware of this potential threat and risk to their country's economy and infrastructure? This is not a criticism against the South Koreans, but to any goverment that has allowed this kind of vulnerability to exist. The North Koreans are exploiting a potential weakness in their neighbours dependancy on a single OS. Maybe this will be a wake up call for them to start looking at alternatives... BSDs, Mac OSX, Linux, ...etc.

This Brings Back Warm Happy Memories.

[LifesABeach]

I can remember on cold rainy evenings "training" my "Crackers" before having a bowl of "Campbells Tomato Soup".

More a risk to themselves?

[OgGreeb]

If they are any good at what they do, wouldn't a trained cadre of hackers be more dangerous to the North Korean Government then to anyone outside of North Korea? Again, if they are any good at what they do, how would you tell them "go forth and cause problems for our enemies" and still believe they wouldn't hack into their own government's systems? How would NK prevent these hackers from doing that, and possibly retasking national assets or releasing incriminating or embarrassing information? For that matter, wouldn't it be easy to turn some of these people and have them help *us* against their own government, whether for money or revolutionary zeal?

How do you keep these guys under control?

crackers, rednecks, hicks, hayseeds...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care if they've hired the entire cast of Hee-Haw, they won't break our codes.

I wonder if this information was obtained...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...by the same people who determined that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.

no sweat

[megarich]

no prob, just hire some of these would be crackers, and have them attack n korea ;) then you can see for sure if their legit or not. money speaks louder than country loyalty.

Big whoop...

[Anonymous Coward]

If all else fails, we have the CyberArmy to fall back on... :)

I want in...

[s7726]

Where do I sign up?

Dynasty.. NK style

[cbelt3]

Uhm- I hate to break it to you, but he's already reproduced....

i think i saw this movie...

[cygnus]

it's called The Manchurian Canidate. if i remember correctly, they trained some black people, too. :)

Moral Relativism Rears Its Ugly Head

[DesScorp]

"Calling someone 'evil' is a purely subjective judgement anyway, as they're trying to do their own thing within an ideological structure that they think is right. You don't score points by being critical."

You just summed up, in one paragraph, what's so utterly wrong with the left. Evil, sir, is not subjective. Oppressing and starving your people is not just "doing your own thing within an ideological context". By this reasoning, no system can ever be wrong. Nazism can be excused because invading your neighbors and shipping Jews off to ovens just becomes "just doing your thing". Communism becomes just fine because creating gulags becomes "just doing your thing".

When those airliners smashed into the Twin Towers, were the hijackers just "doing their own thing"?

Ideas have consequences, especially when put into practice. And evil exists, and must be oppossed. We can debate how best to do it, but to suggest that it doesn't exist at all, that we shouldn't judge on conduct or ideals, is to become complicit in the act of monsters, to become part of their crimes ourselves.

Re:Moral Relativism Rears Its Ugly Head

[Whatchamacallit]

Bravo! You beat me to it!

"Calling someone 'evil' is a purely subjective judgement anyway, as they're trying to do their own thing within an ideological structure that they think is right. You don't score points by being critical."

Satan's greatest 'trick' has been to convince 'man' that he doesn't exist and that 'evil' doesn't exist!

Surely, evil exists:

1. Saddam and his offspring threw people into large V8 Cylinder wood chippers feet first.
2. Saddam gassed thousands of his own people (Kurds and Shiites) and the Iranians.
3. Uday would grab any woman he wanted, rape and abuse her and if she resisted, he would kill her family then kill her. This son of a dictator also opened fire on civilian drivers whenever he felt the urge. He also shot a General in the head during a party at the palace.
4. Kim Jong Ill is personally responsible for the deaths of more then a million of his own citizens. He is completely crazy on the same level as Uday. The N. Koreans get zero outside information. Recently all radio's were confiscated and replaced with circuitry that decoded only the regime's broadcasts. Some N. Koreans were given cell phones and then the government took them away a few days later for fear of contact with the outside world. The civilians worship him like a god.
5. Liberia rebels were seen chopping up a foe with large machette knives, urinating on the victim, cutting off his genitals and stuffing them in his mouth before finally shooting him in the head. Other rebels used a victims intestines as a makeshift roadblock with the victims decapitated head on a post nearby.

If this small example does not show evil, or at least evil intent; then please explain it to me.

The left is like an ostridge who buries it's head in the sand or the picture of the monkeys "hear, see, speak no evil". Sorry but the left in the US and Western Europe is blind to evil and as such will be subjected to evil's influence. We are witnessing a repeat of history. Of course the good in the US will come to the aid of western europe in the coming WW-IV just like we did in WW-I and WW-II!

Re:Moral Relativism Rears Its Ugly Head

[Anonymous Coward]

"When those airliners smashed into the Twin Towers, were the hijackers just "doing their own thing"?"

Good, evil, whatever. In 5000 years, who'll even remember? You need some perspective.

Re:Moral Relativism Rears Its Ugly Head

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to get your priorities straight.

Remedy: Don't trust user/input-unless its correct.

[iamcf13]

Those 600 purported North Korea computer crackers are NO MATCH against software programs coded to not trust the user or their input unless it's *absolutely* correct.

Unfortunately, there is ALMOST NO DEFENSE against a computer cracker impersonating a legitimate user located at an authorized TCP/IP address that TRACEROUTEs to it in an authentic fashion presenting legitimate system logon credentials in order to infiltrate and compromise a computer system.

There is also ALMOST NO DEFENSE against a 'botnet' launched against the target computer system in the above fashion in order to overwhelm the target system and exhaust their computing resources in the 'classic' Denial-Of-Service style.

Since it is IMPOSSIBLE for the target computer system to tell the difference between a legitimate user and a 'evil computer cracker' who is correctly and successfully impersonating a legitimate user, it is up to the target system's system operators and administrators in 'meatspace' to monitor their systems closely for anything anomolous--no matter how small or insignificant. Case in point: Clifford Stohl's celebrated true-life tale of computer security documented in his book, The Cuckoo's Egg. I read the book when it first came out back in the early 1990s all in one sitting--it took HOURS but was worth it! I even saw the NOVA show based on the book. This book should be required reading by all conscientious people in the computer security industry. If all computer networks were ran by people with the dedication, intelligence, and tenacity of people like Clifford Stohl, computer crackers wouldn't stand much of a chance performing their mischief in cyberspace.

Unfortunately, this would then move the problem into 'meatspace' like never before--with such things as 'line cuts' and 'social engineering' to gain access to the computer systems and networks they want to disrupt, compromise, and/or disable.

Thus, it is up to the computer system operation, administration, support, and security personnel to be conscientious and ever vigilant to thwart these threats--whether they are paid well or barely enough to make ends meet.

If you *TRULY* care about your job in this capacity in the computing industry, the amount of your pay *DOESN'T* dictate the level of your dedication and attention to your job.

low quality crackers

[peter303]

To have high capability cracking, you need an immersive, entreprenuerial computer culture. North Korea's regimented economy is unlikely to have this.

However, you can implement tremendous damage at the script-kiddie level as we have seen time and time again. Compound this with that MicroSoft was forced to reveal parts of its source-code to foreign governements. That code was copied and widely distributed the first day.

Makes sense

[onyxruby]

It makes sense for any number of reasons, and could be quite potent. Manpower is taken care of simply by having a very large pool to drawn from with little or no opportunity elsewhere. It's amazing what hunger and desperation will inspire.

They also have government support. Look at hackers / crackers now and how much they can do on their own. Now imagine your a hacker and you have government blessing and resources available. Imagine that formal classes in the use of tools like packet sniffers are available? Imagine that you don't have to worry about offending anyone or breaking the law to learn your craft. You could very quickly get a situation where you have students teaching students with instructors providing structure to keep people on task.

I think this bears watching and scrutiny. Certainly the South Koreans have done quite a bit tech~wise. If they dont have the highest penetration of broadband of any nation, than they have to be close. They certainly have higher than the US.

Re:Does NK have 600 computers?

[jasmusic]

I for one appreciate the humor.

Cut N. Korea off, sever all network connections

[Anonymous Coward]

China should sever all network connections to N. Korea.

I manage a network which was receiving an enormous amount of abuse from Nigeria so I geo blocked the entire country. Now the network is nice and quite, easy to manage.

Re:One Word:

[jasmusic]

The Koreas may well have been united if not for China attacking American soldiers. And North Korea may well have been subdued by now if not for fear of China pulling the same bullshit twice.

Get a clue, Junior.

[Thud457]

Sorry, I used i nternet when I meant Internet. It's perfectly all right to have your systems on their own, isolated network. There's good reasons some situations require that users have two seperate, isolated machines on the users' desks. Sometimes there's no substitute for actual, physical security.

If you're suggesting that any of the examples you cite above have reason to be connected to the Internet go read the comp.risks archive, starting from the beginning. /bot indeed.

Re:Get a clue, Junior.

[the_mad_poster]

You, sir, are quite insane and entirely incapable of viewing things from a proper business perspective.

From your example above, financial networks isolated such that they are one huge private network would be a massively expensive undertaking. The return? A terribly small increase in network security due to the fact that ins to the system are now physically isolated? This is more than offset by the fact that you now must focus that much more effort on physically securing all of your systems lest an errant ATM machine become a perfect attack vector on a closed system. In addition, you lose much of the routing and damage control capabilities of an enormous shared network. Whereas no attack on a single group of routers on the Internet could be used to destroy the entire thing, there would almost certianly have to be critical weak point in a large, closed system that could be physically destroyed the render the entire system inoperable.

The business concerns regarding the privitization of entire sectors are enormous. Given that these systems can, most certainly, be protected against a direct attack on the conveneniently shared network they're on now, there is no conceivably good reason to run around privatizing everything. The phone system can be attacked, do you think that the only way financial institutions should contact each other on the phone is through one enormous network run by and for the industry? Roadways can be attacked. Should the banking industry create it's own private road system for transportation?

Don't be an idiot. The cost and risk of doing something like that outwieghs the benefit of just properly securing the system we use now in the extreme.

I love the smell of propaganda in the morning

[inc_x]

In related news, the US department of misinformation warned that Iraq has developed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and is able to launch attacks on Britain within 45 minutes.

Kill Bill

[l3pYr]

Microsoft Press Release

A completely independent (and expensive) research panel has discovered Kim Jong II's under-fed and over-zealous hordes of hackers are using LINUX to create the latest variants of evil Windows-seeking worms. Not too worry though, high-priority fixes for Mydoom.NK, Bagle.NK and Bugbear.NK will be available via Windows Update within two or three weeks of their catastrophic releases.

only prison i've read of suicide by head banging

[SaberTaylor]

A travelogue: "Journey into Kimland" by Scott Fisher

more: clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky.
since we seem to read the same stuff as our leaders, might as well be strung along the same.

Woop Woop it's the language police

[autopr0n]

If the headline had said "North Korea has Trained 600 hackers" I would have known exactly what they meant. But using the word "Crackers" here made no sense to me at all.

The only thing I could think of was that they had traned "White People" to be spies or something.

600 Trained White People?

[wwahammy]

Was I the only one who immediately thought crackers was referring to white people?

Windows Security Classes??

[cabra771]

I'm willing to bet they had some students take a few Windows Security classes and are just trying to spin it to sound all threatening.

Night life in Pyongyang

[amightywind]

Interesting since they seem to lack alot of technology up there. Have you seen satellite pictures? Seoul looks like L.A. while North Korea is pitch black. A very poor and low tech country last I heard.

Here it is. The night life in Pyongyang must be nothing to brag about.

They try to hack me every day!

[Anonymous Coward]

A few days ago I was checking my log files to diagnose a problem I'm having with my firewall settings and was SHOCKED to see dozens of attempts on a daily basis to log into my system as root via ssh. I did a few reverse IP lookups and most of them were from Korea. It was certainly an eye opener! Luckily I have root login disabled from the outside but watch out folks, this is for real.

I run linux and am barely above a user level as far as skills go so I know I'm vulnerable.

You sir, are getting tiresome.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Don't be an idiot." gives us a clue about how much creedence to give you.

The fact that you seem to be oblivious to the fact that there are such redundant, isolated networks indicates the paucity of your knowledge.

You kids these days, you think you invented this stuff. These problems have been solved for forty years, and there's good reasons why things were done the way they were. You seem to be overly concerened with the costs of such things. Those can be recouped, and there are some endeavors where cost is not driving concern. Once the DPRK has your bomb test data, there's no getting back to them not having it.

At the very least, the scope of your vision is limited. Your probably shouldn't be running around calling people idiots.

Re:You sir, are getting tiresome.

[the_mad_poster]

You, sir, are posting anonymously, which gives us a clue about how much creedence to give you.

Re:You sir, are getting tiresome.

[memodude]

And you, sir, can't spell credence.

Re:You sir, are getting tiresome.

[the_mad_poster]

Okay, blog-boy. Let's be pendantic about my spelling.

Incidentally, how's that rechargable wet-dry vac working out for you?

Pulling the plug

[phorm]

There have been a few times when there have been internet breakages between Australia and N. America, and I believe even between N. America and Europe.

Critical hubs go down, storms disrupt communications, trunk lines can be damaged

As far as deterring crackers in N. Korea, wouldn't it be as simple as pulling a plug?

Of course, many of these seem to be operating out of China, but I'd imagine that China itself can employee enough counter-hackers and hunters to deal with that problem... they've definately got the population for it and some damn good hackers of their own.

this is step 1

[Anonymous Coward]

1 nation x announces security threat y
2 nation x announces security measure z to counter y
3 the rich/powerful coincidentally benefit from z

C&C Generals, anyone?

[Psignorian]

Seriously though, if the hackers are able to disable buildings and hack the internet to steal money every fifteen or twenty seconds or so, I'll giggle.

Re:C&C Generals, anyone?

[markan18]

Can you hear it now?

"Our nuclear missile is ready general!"
...
"We have launched our nuclear missile!"

as advanced as everyone else?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say they've gone above and beyond here. No other country that I know of actually bothers to try crackers, they're too busy trying to nab them. President Clinton and Bush both offered jobs to crackers and promised they wouldn't be arrested, and then arrested them. Any cracker who is naive or stupid enough to believe the U.S. government is in for a world of pain.

In short, North Korea is doing what other countries should have been doing all along, filling their intelligence arsenal with black hats. Not only are they doing this, they are helping to create new ones by training them with formal education! It is brilliant and devious.

Maybe other countries will follow suit now, but I doubt it. My prediction is that the rest of the world is going to head into denial about this. And, one day North Korea is going to be the richest country in the world all of a sudden, and nobody will know why. :-D

Haven't any of you guys played C&C Generals as China? ;-)

p.s. This is a GREAT solution to their economic problems btw. What better way to feed your people, the internet is a gold mine.

But the good news

[hotspotbloc]

... South Korea claims that the north has a five-year university program for hacker training ...

But the good news is you can get your MCSE in just 12 months!

Thank you, I'll be here all week ...

Re:But the good news

[Anonymous Coward]

... South Korea claims that the north has a five-year university program for hacker training ...

But will they accept credits from ITT?

This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

North Korea uses FreeBSD

Does N Korea even have internet access?

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the bans and sanctions against N.K, how would they be able to connect to the internet? Surely all the countries bordering N.K aren't allowing them to connect to their fat pipes. Even if N.K did have internet, why not just ban everything coming from them.

Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. Big boys?

[davidsyes]

If N. Korea wants to join the "big boys", they should start a space program. First, send small animals up. Next, prisoners, in exchange for clemency. Next, full-fledged KoroNauts, probably from a pool of pilots. Once they've acted as a proxy for other nations wanting live human research (without the tarnish of being public backers) N. Korea could have a schload of cash in hand. Hopefully, they'll buy food with it.

But, what I'd REALLY like to see --but probably won't happen in the next 50 years -- is for N & S Korea to reunify. If China doesn't have too much of a problem, and if the US can be forced off the peninsula by popular vote, then it could happen --eventually.

However, what might smooth the process is if they don't engage in the US-bullshit-styled bicameral party where votes are stolen and the voting process is, at best, illusory. What the Koreas/Koreans can do is this:

First term of unification peninsular leadership

-- NK Premier/President sends the NK VP to be VP of SK.

-- SK President sends the SK VP to be VP of NK.

Replace BOTH the NK and SK presidents, since the NK Pres will likely be too unsavory to lead, and the North will undoubtedly balk at the sitting SK Pres leading.

--Have NK and SK both select a palatable president, and call it provisional, but have the two VPs administratively run things domestically while the provisional presidents make the global circuit to get food and construction aid to the North.

--The North and South, reunified, could consider scrapping their current parties and renaming them --purely in the name of accelerating the Reunification. They could remove references to "democracy" or the like that the North regime/administration officials would find heart-stopping.

In Term Two:

--Re-elect the current P & VP -- if there is no public lack of confidence. Hold off replacement elections for the third term

-- Swap the North and South provisional VPs' duties, both still as VPs.

-- 6 months into the (hopefully smoother) admnistration, promote them to twin sitting presidents. After all, as delicate as this Reunification will be, dual-accountability and public trust/confidence would be paramount, compared to what we have going on here in the US (where' our votes are bought and paid by corporations, where national voting is reduced to a "feel-good" excercise, and where some consider the words theocracy, plutocracy and democracy to have less emphasis on democracy, since we're (the masses) so wound up working to pay bills or keep up appearances and where we're disillusioned by being fed lies from sitting officials who in all likely hood just want us to shut up and leave them alone.

Third Term:

-- Remove US military set pieces and dismantle the bases

-- Reconfigure the bases for commercial work, so that starving Koreans still in the north can get travel permission ahem, travel fare and arrangements to do manufacturing and piece work on the Tech Parks at the former bases

Global Duties and Responsibilities:

Early-Stage Actions:

Nations claiming to be interested in PEACE need to:

-- dismantle their foreign-shore-based military set pieces or reduce them to token presences to alleviate domestic displeasure

-- Strip resources from NATO, ASEAN, SEATO, UN, and other GOs and NGOs and the various former war-fighting nations and create an international, multi-cultural, global naval police, sans the "military "destroyer" class connotations

-- War-footing nations with their floating set pieces MUST see their flag-waving navies deprecated to nothing more than "own-shore coastal patrol units" (In the case of the US, the USCG might get a promotion, and if this were treated like a rough election, the USN would lose a cycle and maybe fall under the DHLS, where the USCG would get from under foot and start getting some real money, real missions, and duties to escort merchants or high-value products, since the USN will likely bitch at being dep

Oops and a small clarification

[MachDelta]

Why do I poke at France? Because they're there! :D
And for the record, i'm not American, i'm Canadian. So I don't disagree with the French on the whole "War on Terror" crap. Infact i'd rather side with the French than the US on that one - my apologies it seemed like I was bashing them for their stance on that.
Anyways, as a Canuck you see, my right to make fun of the french goes waaaay back. Plains of Abraham, years of Quebecois seperatist tensions, and whatnot. So its all good. ;)

(And just incase anyone still thinks i'm an asshole: I actually live in a french-settled community with a good chunk of french canadian residents still living in it. One of my best friends is actually a francophone, so I get to make fun of her accent and learn useful new phrases like "ma maudite merde". Oh, and I dated a half-french girl once, if that counts for anything. Excuse me while I go take a shower. Uh - no relation to the mention of dating a french girl, of course... :P)

Re:May be, the South Koreans need to clean up thei

[Daedala]

There's an interesting white paper on Taiwanese spam from a legal firm there that specializes in intellectual property. I suspect that many of the reasons Taiwan has so much spam may also apply to South Korea.

Monitoring a small country's internet pipes?

[mikefe]

North Korea is surrounded by their enemies.

Unless their work is done via satalite, (which I'm sure can be tapped also), why not just monitor their ineternet usage if something like this is suspected?

I mean, they communist and everything, and once the data gets over to another allied country you can pretty much do what you want...

So, why is this a problem?

Anyone who thinks the Internet is immune to control has not thought the idea through.

Re:Asia has a computing monoculture... Not yet!

[davidsyes]

What would be even funnier is if the forensics work shows the attacking computers are ms-windoze based.

SHORThorn or longTHORN hasn't even arrived yet, and that gargantuan, lumbering manatee

( http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/5960/manatee.ht ml/

or

http://www.manateeworld.net./

(Does anyone know if Tux can outswim a manatee?))

of an operating system seems to be growing tusks and attacking its own.
I think "Food not bombs" can be amended for North Korea to read:

"(Food) Bites not (Attack) Bytes"

But, what the world needs to look out for is whether China truly has the resolve to not knuckle under to microstoff (lower-casing/deprecation of ms' name intentional/perpetual with me). I wonder how much the Chinese ms VP gets paid if China lets the dangerous back-door-likely-enabled foreigner windoze snake its way through the soverign infrastructure of China...

China is as RED as John Wayne's Blood !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Tibet !!

China is as RED as John Wayne's Blood !! Make no mistake.

No need for racial slurs

[Uncle Gropey]

Why not just call them "600 white guys"?

Eh??

[Xizer]

They've trained 600 white people? Those crazy Koreans!

Eye Pleasing Colors

[Anonymous Coward]

http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/05/0 314258

Media beatup

[dcam]

I think this is just a media beat up.

My experience of computer attacks is that they are not particularly directed. That is, you can do damage if you have a broad target in mind, but it is a lot harder if you have a specific target in mind. So you may be able to hack into a company when you choose to, but to pick a specific company and break into that company is a lot harder. Scan for $favority_vuln and find a hundreds of boxes vulnerable (ie hundreds of options), scan a particular company for a vulnerability and you have less options.

Bad analogy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, the bottomline is that if you want to survive a gunshot, you wear a bulletproof vest. Carrying a gun yourself does nothing.

Bullshit.

If you take a bullet in the chest from an aggressor, even after the bullet proof vest stops the bullet you still stand against an armed aggressor. How long after the first shot do you think it takes for the second shot to come your way? How long does it take to pull a trigger? Think statistics: if someone offloads a firearm in your general direction, not all bullets will land nicely in your vest. One is bound to hit you in a limb or your head.

If you want to survive a gunshot, you kill the man shooting at you before he can get a shot off.

Bulletproof vests don't cover the whole body and head shots are easy to make at point blank range.

Sooner or later it boils down to kill or be killed. The best defense is to eliminate the aggressor.

And yes, I've been shot at before. Sometimes shit happens.

My point: bad analogy. Please pick another one.

Resource Acquisition

[enol]

I can't believe no one can see what they're doing...

they're out of their natural resources. Hacking is the only way they can get $$$ now. You just see. When they get upgraded to Black Lotus, nukes are going to start flying... /obscure

Awesome...

[oohgodyeah]

A 5-year university to become an elite hacker? Damn!!

Where can I sign up?

Why doesn't the US of A have an awesome Elite Hacker/Cracker major at any of its universities?

Biting the hands that feed

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, NK is already being given loads of handouts, so much that it is causing scandals in the donor countries [Japan, SK, USA]. Heck, one country even agreed [ahem, USA--Jimmy Carter/ Bill Clinton was it?] to *give* them light water nuclear reactors, just hoping they wouldnt build bombs then!

How much peaceful benevolence do you want?

Equipment level

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that it necessarily is accurate, but:

The footage being shown on Japanese TV has what look like highschool students in military uniforms, in a computing-classroom setting. They are all crammed into rows of tables with computers on them, in one not-so-big room.

I dont mean to dis the ability of poor people to learn, or the ability of peasants to suddenly pick up high tech. But... If hackers dont even get cubicles, how likely is it that they can concentrate well enough to get anything significant done?

And how much is a team of 600 worth, in the grand scheme of systems & topologies out there? Traditionally [as of 5 years ago] the superpowers of militarized hacking have been estimated to be Israel, Taiwan, and China. Those three countries have been concentrating on it the longest. A number of other countries presumably have the skills and/ or resources, but not the motivation to integrate it into the military apparatus.

Yeah, sure.

[jotaeleemeese]

Their crackers-spies would be by then in CHina, Russia, Japan and South Korea.

It is not like they need a base...

& Americans are the most evil then

[DABANSHEE]

Afterall the US is one of the top countries in regards possesing WMD & has the worst recordd in the world in regards the deliberate targeting of civilians with it's WMD.

Remember virtually all the people Iraq targeted with WMD in the Iran-Iraq war were soldiers, while it's use of gas in the Kurdish insurgency only caused 4 figure fatalities - less than 10,000, which is less than the number of Iraqi dead in Shrub's War, while the ratio of civilian dead relative to belligerent dead is not significantly different. Now compare that to the hundreds of thousands of casualties at Hiroshima & Nagasaki, more than 95% of which were innocent civilians.

Now if we are going to claim Saddam was evil because he waged aggressive war, used WMD & repressed minorities, then the only conclusion we can make is that the US is even more evil.

Afterall the US has waged many more wars than Baathist Iraq ever did (over 200 wars in the 220 odd years since the American revolution) & has been involved in many more agressive wars.

The US has also killed many more people with WMD too, & a much higher proportion of civilians to combatents too.

While the US has repressed minorities more than Baathist Iraq ever did. Just look at the genocide or virtual genocide of the 500 North American Indian nations. Now compare that to Baathist Iraq, where Shias & Kurds still form the majority in most of the regions where they formed majorities before the Baathists came to power.

Ever notice ...

[Anonymous Coward]

how alot of Spam also originates from China based ISP's?

With the North Korean hackers working out of China, and the Spammers, perhaps it is time for Homeland Security to designate CHhna as a source of cyber terrorism and cut all telecom links from China to Western networks. I don't know if this is possible but as I sit here deleting spam for viagra I can only dream.

hahahahaha

[Mika24]

S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers The title makes it seem that N. Korea is training white people