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.

[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.

[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.

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...

[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.

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.

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.

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...

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

[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.

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.

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.