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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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"

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...

[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...

[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]

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

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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[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...

[swillden]

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

For a suitable definition of "works".

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...

[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....

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?

[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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

[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.

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.

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

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

[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.

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.

[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.

and then it happens

[Konster]

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

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

[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 -->

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

[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

[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.

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.

Economy measure?

[jcr]

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

-jcr

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: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.

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.

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.

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: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

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!

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.

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!

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 ....

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.

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...

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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... :(

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.

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.

600 Trained White People?

[wwahammy]

Was I the only one who immediately thought crackers was referring to white people?

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

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.