Slashdot Mirror
Australia Vulnerable to Korean Hacking Army
Nan writes "An army of more than 500 hackers hired by the North Korean military could find Australian businesses a "softer target" than their U.S. or European-based counterparts, according to security experts. The hacking army's mission is to break into South Korean, Japanese and American corporate networks to gather intelligence and steal trade secrets, according to reports."
... Western countries unite in a global blocking campaign, virtually disconnecting North Korea from the internet, after a number of government-funded hacking threats from North Korea.
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
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From the article -
"This is probably more boasting than a real threat. In the past we have seen similar claims from the Taiwanese and the East Timorese," said Hyppönen.
Heh. Probably yet another of those notice us! notice us! type publicity stunt by N Korea.
And even if they do hack into an odd website or two, people will start to take notice and will act on it. It's far easier to secure your networks than launch an offensive on N Korea.
These guys just need to be ignored while they jump around their cages trying to garner attention.
The US established here in Europe a gigantic spy network, called Echelon. As we now know they also use this network for stealing trade secrets.
So, the situation here is not that different here unless no one seems to bother about this...
Last I checked you needed electricity to run a computer, and last satellite photo I saw, the North Koreans didn't have any of that.
I'm betting Aussie networks are safe from their North Korean TCP/Abacus layer attacks.
yeah...hack by candle light...
that article sounds like a lot of wank
Note to Kim Jong-Il:
It's not how many hackers you have but how good they are. One really skilled hakcker can do a lot of damage if he manages to attack at the right point.
I don't need a signature.
1. Buy South Korean wireless gear.
2. Build Antenna
3. Download Team America: World Police
4. Get sent to prison camp with family
5. Become cannibal
Because we are not them.
And it would be a scary precedent. If it's N Korea today, why couldn't it be China tomorrow?
And you would be harming whatever little percentage of people who use the Internet in N Korea, in the process. Besides, the Internet would be a source of access to the people of that country.
We all know how well sanctions work, right? It wouldn't make a difference. They're just trying to rake up a noise to garner attention.
Better that they say they'd hack into networks rather than say they'd launch a nuclear offensive.
I think it's much more dangerous a dispersed group like al-qaeda that doesn't have any centralized structure but can act as a big group. Korea is not a big threat because they don't have the education to form 500 hackers nor the resources. But al-qaeda members are going to our universities and using the same broadband conections we use.
I would focus on protecting systems rather than trying to spot hackers.
Why have such secrets and sensitive information Internet accessible? it's their own fault if their security methods are weak and information can be accessed by hackers.
Yeah well, they should stop giving hackers from N Korea moderation rights anyway... :)
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
Why do I continually get service probes and scans from Korea and Taiwan?
He must have come up with that idea while playing C&C:Generals. Since he's also rumored to be a great fan of pr0n he probably won't share his female superhackers with us. : /
Whether their threats are real or not, it is easier to deal with with our own army of hackers. Govts need to pay more attention to secure their internal network and sensitive data, and then ignore their threats. Fight hackers with hackers I say, better this than laucnh a nuclear strike to get attention :-)
Crikey! Do you blokes reckon that those little North Koreeun fellas would be able to hack into my beer recipes?
And the DPRK doesn't really want to piss us off - we are in a fairly unique position, as a close American ally that has diplomatic relations with the North Koreans. They may be tyrannical thugs, but they're not stupid either, and that diplomatic channel is surely worth more to them than hacking a few corporate websites.
As for Australia's defence and intelligence agencies, well, we're a branch office for America, and they let us in on a lot (but not all, obviously) of their stuff. That wouldn't happen unless the US agencies were comfortable that the only people that can hack in are, well, themselves...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
yeah, coz you know, with that American Might you can just block the entire country of north korea from having internet access 'at the flick of a switch'.
.. whatever country they're in, or from.
dufus. the internet is everywhere. you can't block all the connections that a 500-man organized team of hackers can set up for themselves
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Quote:
According to a report commissioned by the European Union, entitled Development of Surveillance Technology and the Risk of Abuse of Economic Information, the system has, since the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, been partially dedicated to industrial espionage.
According to the New York Times, the report claims that information gleaned through Echelon helped U.S. aerospace firm Boeing win a lucrative Saudi Arabian contract away from a European competitor, and that Echelon was used to help the American company Raytheon "win a bid for a $1.3 billion surveillance system for the Amazon forest away from Thomson-CSF, a French company."
Windows users:
Internet Explorer is obsolete. Please upgrade to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
1. Create security firm in your neighborhood.
2. Write paranoid article in local journal.
3. Profit!
http://hmcs.scu.edu.au/crisis/2003/03F3E2CA90.html
... surely we can just cut their net cables?
No net access, low hacking risk.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The most out-of-shape military force on Earth. Their base of operations is their parents' basements. Their rations consist entirely of pizza and Bawls. Their uniform is jeans and a shirt with either the word "w00t!" (for grunts) or the phrase "i read your e-mail" (for officers). Their recruitment literature looks like this:
HungLo2099: d000dz!!!!11!1!! u could 500000 pwn amerkians!!!1!!!!!
Z3r0k3wl: kewl!!1! wehre do w3 sign up?
HungLo69: OMG america iz teh suck!!1!!1 OMGWTFLOLOLOLOL!!!!!1!!1!111!!11!oneone!1
HungLo2099: d00dz!! u also get free pizza and a t-shirt!!!!1!!!11!
Z3r0k3wl: w00t!
HungLo69: pwnage11!11!
Trust me, I've seen it.
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As a closet Australian, I'd just to like to reassure everyone out there that there's nothing worth stealing in Australia anyway - not even information ... so it's all moot.
.... nothing to see here.
Move along
Servlet v2.4 container in a single 161KB jar file ? Try Winstone
Bah. When the internet is controlled by the US they can disconnect who they like with it. But its not controlled by the US. If anyone had that kind of control to selectively disconnect people they didn't approve of would only serve to degrade the internet from the last truly free environment to just another mediated/monitored/censored medium like tv or the radio. You can't just kick out a country because you dont like their intentions, dont be an idiot.
Their base of operations is their parents' basements. Their rations consist entirely of pizza and Bawls.
Whoa. Don't insult your fellow Slashdotters. It's perfectly normal for a 30-year-old to live in his parents' basement. And pizza makes a fine meal -- how else could I have grown to be so, uhm, big and strong?
I don't need a signature.
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...... should have kept it an island for criminals I tell ya....
-=Linsys=-
http://www.intrusionsec.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That's not a root kit.
Here. Now this is a root kit, mate.
"cut a few cables" .. uh huh.
...
look, all it takes is *ONE* connection to the internet, in safe harbour somewhere, and they're back on again.
just forget it. there's no way to 'cut them all off' from the 'net. its a preposterous idea.
the only solution is diplomacy. these people clearly think that their position is the right one; well, why is that? learn the answer to that question, and use diplomacy
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I don't see how industrial espionage from the mechanized world is going to help a 4th world nation. Though this does show that when you don't have a culture of innovation you do have one of immitation.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
Many people like to think that australia and new zealand are backwards counties down in the middloe of nowhere. In reality many of Australian businesses adopt technology and security standards much faster than thier US counterparts.
Its funny that many of the best security professionals throughout the 80s where based from Australia. This trend has continued and Australian businesses are often well prepared and secured. This is obviously a fairly big generalisation with companies like Optus having major breakings etc most of the major corporates in australia have a very good security history.
Excuse me, but unless there's actually an evidence, I don't see North Korea as a threat. What we have here is an increasing hype against them like there has been before the US carpet bombed Iraq.
And you're just showing everybody how receptive you are to war so that, if enough people like you show up, there won't need to be much more hype to just proceed with the strategic installation of more armed forces in SE Asia.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
An army of more than 500 hackers hired by the North Korean military
More like an army of Star Craft and Counter Strike players to me.
omfg zerg rush kekekekeke =^-^=
coz we keep 'em both locked up in a safe....
Burma?
at least most Australians have upgraded from Windows 95. (referring back to a comment in previous newspost about this)
Remember children, all generalizations are wrong.
After all NK seems to have been able to produce nuclear weapon despite its backwardness.
You sure don't want to tell me that stealing some trade secrets online is more complicated than that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Stupid American!
We have storen yor trade secrets aready!
We now have factories that are assembring *your* most powerfu weapon ever. Frickin sharks with frickin rasers on their heads! Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
Yours trury,
Kim Jong-Il
With my sincerest apologies to Dr. Evil, South Park, and all the people in North Korea (where millions are suffering from starvation...)
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
for one, welcome our superior north korean hacker army overlords!
That may be the case (I don't pay all that much attention to corporate aus), but our broadband access still sucks. $70/mo for 12gb of transfer is just... crap. When oh when will stupid telstra do something...
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
"The hacking army's mission is to break into South Korean, Japanese and American corporate networks to gather intelligence and steal trade secrets, according to reports."
So, if I understand correctly, Aussie businesses may be a softer target, but they aren't targeted.
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
I learned this a couple days ago. The "First World" is made of Capitalist/Western countries, the "Second World" is made of Communist/Eastern countries, and "Third World" countries are those that don't fit into either catagory. So North Korea is really a Second World country, not 4th.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
I think that this report was perhaps written from an angle that assumes we ride kangaroos to school, after all we have to. They are the only thing that gets us out of range of those pesky crocs! IMHO - As a PhD comp-sci student 'down-under' we are FAR from being the bottom of the pile in the tech industry and further from being a soft electronic target. I'll worry about the north korea electonic threat when they can feed their own population!! -- Throw another shrimp on the barby luv!
Brought to you by the same people that guaranteed WMDs in Iraq and Osama captured within a year, and a link betwen them.
Given that internet-exposed networks are constructed with the assumption that *all* of the other 4.3 billion IP addresses are likely to be a source of hostile activity, I fail to see how this actually being true for any subset of the 4.3 billion changes the security equation.
Wow, that Korean hacker training program must be tough... there were 600 of them a week ago.
If the North Koreans hadn't thought of this before, they certainly have now. :)
...and it's getting riper. Sounds more like someone's trying to sell anti-hacker insurance. Personally, I'd be a lot more concerned about botnets than some alleged "security expert" warning about an "army of hackers" in some place he knows I can't check.
There. Thanks for letting me get that out.
Indeed, it is trivially easy to get a connection to the internet (unless you're with AOL).
Even cutting the cables to Sri Lanka only affected 'most of the population' (ie - not *ALL* of them).
3 posts and 2 are from the "I HATE AMERICA" crowd and have already been rated 5-interesting.
Don't you people ever sleep?
Every country practices espionage. EVERY country. The US, with its technical resources, has been very successful in the past in elint. The Soviets were particularly successful with their humint efforts.
I don't think anyone is saying the North Koreans don't have a 'right' to form their 'hackforce' (it's only leftists and liberals that talk about 'rights' in geopolitics anyway); I think the point is that their calling attention to it is the sort of attention-whoring that suggests that it's less a real exercise than cage-rattling.
-Styopa
"Oh, a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-my-own-Grandpa." - Dr Hubert Farnsworth
I would be surprised if their militairy didnt have some division to sabotage all enemy communications. I know the western european countries together have several thousand troups trained especially for that purpose.
People often say you should be able to leave wear very flashy jewellery, wave around your money and leave your house unlocked. Not have to be vigilant, lock and alarm your house etc..
Likewise, some would say lets get rid of the security hackers, but this isn't going to happen any sooner than getting rid of thieves.
Cyber-crime is much easier to get away with than physical crime (ie. going out and robbing/beating someone). Therefore you have to make sure that if you have important information that can be accessed on the Internet that it is locked down well.
As for logging IP addresses, if the hacker has been dumb enough to leave a non-spoofed IP address , what are you going to do? report them to their ISP? the ISP will be under the control of the N. Korean government, hardly likely to process your claim are they?
Important note to script kiddies: When hunting for ASP-"enabled" web sites for testing your SQL-injection skills, use a North Korean web proxy.
The North Korean goverment needs to grow food for their people, not get the rest of the world mad at them.
roamingfeet
The Internet is more dangerous to them than it is to us. Plus, it's healthy for a system to get attacked now and then.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Learn history or be doomed to repeat it. This Stalinist state has been immune to diplomacy for the past 60 years. Nothing works. They have three world powers to play off against each other, and China has been shielding them to some extent since 1951.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL
HAVING CONSULTED WITH MY COLLEAGUES AND BASED ON THE INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE North Korean CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO REQUEST FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER THE SUM OF $47,500,000.00 (FORTY SEVEN MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS) INTO YOUR ACCOUNTS.
these dastardly koreans have been training for war for years, they are an unstopable force, as anybody who has played starcraft in the last 3 years would know... huk huk
kekekekekeke ^^ -_-;;
they probably should upgrade to warcraft3 though...
T.T
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
Im sure the FBI cant touch him in NK, then again, how many ex programmers/ russian hackers are there that are unemployed, and with lots of debts and would love to have lots of high tech toys and whores at their finger tips who just go for the money and jump to NK. I am sure theres bound to be some in this 600million + PC world of ours.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Im sure Dicks Haliburton has a top security arm willing to help all Aussie companies be secure, (while they 'backup' their secrets too)
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
500 million hackers couldn't hack a sandwich out of the Internet.
The sourcecode to Windows couldn't feed an ant.
Nuclear material, even with Martha Stewart's help, never tastes good.
So, keep trying to bring the West down. You are so stupid.
For an example on how to destroy the West, give China a call. They are doing a pretty good job, without firing a shot.
Diplomacy? We've tried diplomacy for years and it doesn't work. We need to invade them and destroy them before it's too late. Kim Jong-il is clearly insane and will launch attacks against anyone who disagrees with him. For freedom to prosper in the world we must ensure that nations like North Korea don't exist.
Difficult for the NKs to get an AOL connection, but all too easy for them to get hold of our valuable AOL free-trial CDs.
"All your Interne- er... Wallabies are belong to us"
This is one of the stupid Orielly-like claims or the Bush-like claims. This time we have the Howard claim!
There are lots of people willing to do their work from outside N.K. just like spammers. The next thing you know that people are blaiming all spam on N.K.
This is all BS (i.e. Bush Sh*t)
Because MS products are the dominant force.
And if MS has a majority marketshare in the enterprise, you'd better be DAMNED good at security.
Or maybe the article is really saying "Oz more at risk due to MS security issues over Apache and Unix using EU/US"
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
are you called George W. ?
Of course a normal satelite is usually not designed for reentry, however the Russians reentry program work got them successful landings on Venus, can't recall if they hit Mars or Mercury with a landed probe back then. If it was designed for reentry then I'd say it would be in good enough shape to examine, no matter where it came down.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
We have blocked all of APNIC at our firewall. No traffic can goto or come from any IP address within the APNIC range. Too many attempts to hack our systems have come from APNIC ranges. The number of hack attempts have been reduced to coupious amounts to only a hand full.
They aren't competing in those markets so there is no real reason to deny them access to the info!
:)
Sigh technically superior communists who would have thunk it.
Nope, bush has yet to invade N Korea. See most people would go for attacks against N Korea, no problem, not just Bush supporters. And you, JackDante, are a fucking troll.
We've tried diplomacy for years and it doesn't work.
.. so i wouldn't be so quick to assume that your definition of 'sane' is the be-all, end-all of the word. sane is as sane does; and by that basis, the US is Totally Fucking Bonkers.
.. study up on that history, and we can start talking about which is the 'saner nation' ..
no, you've failed at diplomacy, you haven't tried it. fact is, America is just as incapable of diplomatic relations with NK as NK 'is capable of with the US'..
as for the definition of 'sane', i think you'll find that the definitions you are using were given to you by vested interests, who are capable of capitalizing on the definitions of 'sanity' versus 'insanity'
40 Wars, since the end of WW2
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Sigh but if we try to understand the other people maybe we'll figure out they are right... Didn't you learn anything from the media coverage of 9/11 not only does the American populance live in blissful ignorance much of the media does and the government likes it that way.
If diplomacy was possible, then blowhards like you would have already taken care of the problem.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
we're not pulling the plug (literally) on Korea.........why?
"Let loose a vicious rage upon thy enemy for they know not with what they fumble!"
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
oh, right, coz if 'nuclear power' were possible, we'd have it by now..
...
dude, diplomacy takes hard work and well-tuned ethics.
the reason America resorts to violence so often is because it is The Lazy Path, and 'convenient means of disposing of ones problems' is a part of the American Psyche
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Hmmm...I thought that historically sanctions (the effective strong arm of diplomacy) were in general considered quite effective. They were certainly effective when just the threat of sanctions were used against the Bush steel policies.
is that you cts?
Like it or not, the Internet has become just as important to the national and international commerce and social structure as roads, phone lines, and buildings are. Infiltrating and attacking a "cyber" space is now ethically and morally no different from doing the same to a "real-world" space.
With actions come consequences. Retaliation against such attacks, be it "cyber" or "real-world" should be inevitable and expected. This is no different from a group of individuals breaking into a building and stealing comparable information.
the only solution is diplomacy. these people clearly think that their position is the right one; well, why is that? learn the answer to that question, and use diplomacy ...
I think it is a bit more difficult than that. North Korea recently threatened to turn Japan into a "nuclear sea of fire" should the US attack NK with nukes.
Rhetoric like that shows just how insane this regime is, and how difficult diplomacy will be. If the DPRK ("Democratic Peoples" Republic of North Korea) had their way, they would be blackmailing their way to wealth using what nuclear power they can ammass. So good luck with diplomacy. And we should probably start our diplomacy by addressing the nuclear issue. Somehow I think that the issue of hacking is pretty low on the State Department's to-do list.
The incompetent Madeline Albright was suckered by Jong-Il into believing this madman would not pursue nuclear weapons, so forgive me if I don't trust him. Like GWB tried to say, "won't get fooled again!" *power chord*
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
As a security professional in Australia, we're not behind at all. We patch our web servers, mail servers and use modern firewall appliances.
From the 80s we've been teaching the rest of the world how to hack. For a history lesson check Suelette Dreyfus's book Underground.
Australia invented the fax machine, fibre optic cabling and the black box flight recorder!
For freedom to prosper in the world we must ensure that nations like North Korea don't exist.
You must be in one of the 2nd strike cities then, they have the bomb, they don't use it because of mutually asured distruction.
The only realistic solution is hope the'll go away, and keep on hoping until they do.
Because they are using China proxies. To cut China from the internet just is not realistic. It's the biggest potential market for the rest of the world. And to force China to cut North Korea is not realistic either.
So? The US frequently threatens other countries with a similar fate. Why should the US be allowed to do it, and NK not? Oh, wait, maybe your finely tuned media machine hasn't filled you in the details.. the US threatens the lives of the populace of governments it doesn't like, all the frickin' time...
.. does this not sound like evil rhetoric to you? Sure sounds like it to me...
"Axis of Evil"
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Well the way i see things, is that NK will attack all systems, giving up on non-MS computers, attacking all MS systems, and voila, the whole world is microsoft-free! isn't that great? i think we should send 'em a flower to thank them
Diplomacy? We've tried diplomacy for years and it doesn't work. We need to invade them and destroy them before it's too late. Kim Jong-il is clearly insane and will launch attacks against anyone who disagrees with him. For freedom to prosper in the world we must ensure that nations like North Korea don't exist.
This has to be the funniest thing I've read all month.
Did you just suggest we watch CNN or FOX news?
The mind boggles.
We need to invade them and destroy them before it's too late. Kim Jong-il is clearly insane and will launch attacks against anyone who disagrees with him.
I really liked this part. Who will launch attacks against anyone who disagrees with him, again?
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Yeah, US = DPRK. That's the most criminally stupid thing I've read all day.
If by "fine-tuned media machine" you are saying Google News, antiwar.com, Reason and other assorted independent websites are brainwashing me, you should try maybe getting a fucking clue. I'm a fairly radical libertarian on many social and economic issues, and I hate a lot of what Bush does, but I am probably voting for him this election because of psychotic leftist nutjobs like yourself who can't do anything but shoutdown perceived opponents and decry anything right of Lenin to be evil corporate fascism. So when I vote for Bush, consider it a big "fuck you," especially to people who talk the way you do.
Because Axis of Evil or Evil Empire are certainly innappropriate, especially when referring to North Korea, who treats its citizens so humanely, and with such dignity! Truly, they are a beacon of freedom that puts the evil US to shame.
In summary, I said that we should deal with the threat of North Korea NUKING asian countries, and that nukes > hacking, and your response is effectively, "SO? THE US IS JUST AS BAD." Turn the volume down on that Limp Bizkit CD, asshole.
Lets see if North Korea can take it's own medicine.
Make it legal to hack them. Make it legal for us to take over their computers and turn it against them. Post a $1M reward for the first person that can wipe 20% of the disk at specifided targets.
My guess is their internet lines will be so congested they will recant and make hacking illegal. And unlike the US, they would enforce it.
The hacking army's mission is to break into South Korean, Japanese and American corporate networks to gather intelligence and steal trade secrets, according to reports.
Gather intelligence of non-existant plans for North Korean campaigns? And gather trade secrets to keep them competitive in what? Subsistance farming? What do they even produce? You could ship trade secrets by the boat load and it wouldn't do them a bit of good.
Well, actually there is a way to cut them all off from the net and diplomacy is not the only solution.
Of course this other answer involves the use of some cruise missiles and is likely to lead to a much larger problem following shortly thereafter but it's not like this is a real obstacle to the current administration.
Not a particularly good alternative but it's technically another option.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
Oh, I can see Barry McGuire now:
Barry opens another can of "Fosters", tastes good, no hacking here; Current Status of the Australian Economy is good.
1 minute later...
Barry opens another can of "Fosters", tastes good, no hacking here; Current Status of the Australian Economy is good.
1 minute later...
Oh! I'm supposted to check for NORTH Korean Hackers? Ok, I'll go back and do THAT!
There is something very fishy about all this. First we hear almost nothing in the press about N.Koria for years and years, who just sit there blowing raspberries at the rest the of the world. Then there are train wrecks and explosions and various evil plots to take over the world.
Now we have a series of articles built up on speculation. Everybody seems to believe them just because it seems like the kind of thing N.Koria would do if it could. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this whole episode was born when Civil Servant A says to Civil Servant B "My win95 box is broken, I bet its those pesky North Korian's trying to hack me...." A political big-wig overhears and thinks "Hey thats a good idea!"
Does anybody have the tiniest little bit of proof?
I guess my worry with all this is that our warmongering governments would just love an excuse to squash that annoying pimple on the face of capitalism. This all may just be a prelude campaign for your hearts and minds - fear and paranoia respectively.
What we have here is an increasing hype against them like there has been before the US carpet bombed Iraq.
Carpet bombed? Carpet bombed?
Grow a fucking clue. The U.S. hasn't done anything even remotely resembling carpet bombing since Vietnam. And no, the few occasions in Afghanistan when a couple of B-52's dropped full loads of 500 pounders on the Taliban doesn't count. It wasn't anything like carpet bombing. Earthshaking yes. Impressive looking yes. But there simply wasn't enough of it for long enough over a large enough area to be considered carpet bombing.
If we were a little more liberal with our use of carpet bombing when it was called for then the insurgents in Iraq would have long ago decided that a nice nine to five job helping to rebuild their country was the ticket instead of playing at guerilla war whilst hoping there really are 72 virgins waiting for them when they fuck up and run into a hail of bullets.
Granted it may only tak 1 connection to the internet, but that one connection would have to be the gateway for all the other nodes connecting to the internet. All the IP's in N. Korea are all probably in the same range also. Why not use IP filtering to block connections from any IP address in that range. I do believe that it would be possible to deny internet access to a country.
.gov was all that concerned about this why not remove there connection. From the looks of it, it doesn't look like they are. This is going to the excuse the .gov uses to further restrict our rights on the net.
Why not reissue the IP's that are assigned to N Korea nodes. No IP no connection. Yes it would be possible for them to get dial-up access but they would have to pay international rates for the phone connection. Even Netzero would be very expensive at that point.
Honestly if the
Everyday we hear about Fallujah being bombed, maybe you changed the name because the Arab have prior art on carpet making but it's still what it's called, Mr Anonymous.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
you can hack things without access to the internet.
hacking exists even with out the internet.
Australia, closer to North Korea by several thousand miles, is a more vulnerable target for Korean nuclear missiles than the United States. Across Australia today, the landscape was alive with furiously digging shovels, as Australians struggled to build bomb shelters, in which to hide their heads in the sand.
--
make install -not war
Dude, they have cell phones: http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200405/kt200405301 4042653460.htm
What I say does not represent the views of my employers, my friends, my cats, or myself.
Wow, amazing.
.. just might .. need to take his head out of his ass before he pushes that Big Fat Red button?
Good, reasoned, clear, calm American level-headed thinking. What else should I expect but extreme bigotry from an American who doesn't like to be told that he might
War is not the solution. Police tactics are not the solution. You clearly are a terrible student of history; NO POLICE STATE, AND NO POLICE STATE TACTICS, HAVE --EVER-- RESULTED IN MORE PEACE!
Your country wants War. It Needs War. Your economy is founded on the principles of War.
By saying 'Nuke Korea', you are not offering War as a solution to anything... you are, in fact, only offering the problem.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
simple.
china can pay us money. north korea can pay us yak poo. that's why we can cut off north korea but not china
and all the people in North Korea (where millions are suffering from starvation...
If Kim Jong-Il would allow his population to participate in international communications and commerce instead of fueling his egotistical/megalomaniacal greed for personal military strength, they could instead be building and selling to the world lots of cheap automobiles, LCD screens, home appliances, etc, like SK and have a chance to be suffering from the effects of being able to begin accumulating some personal wealth for themselves.
it's only leftists and liberals that talk about 'rights' in geopolitics anyway
Those leftists and liberals sound sooo naive. Maybe they want to change the culture of countries like the US (to be fair every super-power and minor power) so that they don't simultaneously talk about how righteous they are, and piss on sovereignty.
On the face of it, it DOES sound very naive, doesn't it. But it's only naive _if_ it doesn't work. That's a scary concept to grapple with... those liberals getting their way!
Well it takes about 20 years for a liberal to turn into a conservative without changing a single viewpoint. Once they are a conservative, they get their way. IMHO, that's a good approximation of "progress". You might want some proof...
Well, once upon a time, it was legal to own people, pretty much everywhere in the world. Then a bunch of liberals got in the road. At first they were heckled, then beaten, but eventually they became conservatives (by default) and got their way.
So what stops slavery now? Well it does occur in some "backward" countries. We think of those countries as backward because we find their acceptance of slavery as abhorrent. But WE were the slavers of THEM once upon a time. Call it a cultural change brought on by leftists of the time. Crazy eh?
We're seeing the same thing happen with the drive for equality for women, gays and ethnic minorities. Hell, it wasn't until 1984 that women were allowed to run the marathon in the Olympic games, because it was considered "bad" for them. It's amazing how quickly those liberals get their way!
In a geo-political sense, things have changed as well. Look at all the world condemnation of the US in Iraq. China would have invaded Taiwan decades ago if it wouldn't have made them look so bad. In the court of world opinion, they would have given the US (and others) a mandate to kick their ass.
Just read about how the US appropriated it's current territory. Do you think they'd be able to do it today, a mere few hundred and a bit years hence? Genocide is really uncool these days, and so is conquering other people. Think I'm exaggerating? Go peruse some of the Sioux-Congress treaties that the US made and broke with gunpowder. Dispicable by today's standards, but back in the day... well... they were only Indians.
It's only the PERCEPTION of the evilness of genocide and conquest that makes the Nazi's so uncool. They didn't do anything that hadn't been done before, by Europeans and others. When the Mongol Khan conquered Samakand, he cut off the head of the cities muslim priest, and held it up and told the people that he was "God's punishment for their sins". Thank god those liberals DID get their way in the end, maybe they were onto something.
It's the court of world opinion that exercises the power of the liberals of the pervious generation, that forces the high and mighty to change their ways.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Look, I'm hungover, so I'll be brief.
You are clearly a no-talent assclown. You haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. War has solved things in the past. Perhaps you've heard of world war II? War did solve something, it put the Nazi regime out of power. Not that you would care, because details like history are too inconvenient for your dogma. Furthermore, I said that we have huge diplomatic issues to deal with vis a vis the NK nuclear threat. I have never ever advocated nuking North Korea, and I think the doctrine of pre-emption is fairly nuts.
Our economy is founded on the notion of private property (a hateful, bigoted idea to be sure!) and free exchange.
Also, I am actually a dual Canadian American citizen. Not that it matters, because you equate being an American to being a bigot. How tolerant of you.
Finally, based on your slashdot user number, you live in a very small, insulated world lit only by the soft glow of a computer screen. You are singularly the stupidest person I have ever encountered on slashdot. Bravo. Maybe you should stop stroking your Marxist roommate's cock and see what the real world is like.
Most of the posts I've seen are:
* Jokes (N. Korea not having electricity, Team America, etc.)
* Suggestions to cut N. Korea from the Internet
* More Jokes
* Skepticism (This hype)
* Yet More Jokes
Personally, I think you come off as overly sensitive and you seem like one who exagerates.
Um... that shows that they are effective against a democracy, which I don't think anyone questions. Sanctions are utterly ineffective against a totalitarian government, because by definition the desires of the government do not reflect the needs of the governed. Sanctions against totalitarian governments harm the populace, while the government is supported by smugglers.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
"The hacking army's mission is to break into South Korean, Japanese and American corporate networks to gather intelligence and steal trade secrets, according to reports."
Just an observation but wouldn't you just keep trade secrets, uh, secret?
It would be dumb to store it on a publicly accessable server. Even the basic security policies in my company make it hard for employees from different departments to get anything useful off the servers so a hacker has pretty much no chance. We're talking insiders here. Using VPN to access work securely from home is pretty simple almost all corporations do it.
They finally blundered. They can threaten our allied countries with nuclear weapons as much as they like, but once they threaten to shave the profit margins of our administration's corporate friends, watch out. There is no way our president will stand for this outrage. BOOOOM!!!
Im tired of Kim Jong Ils saber rattling. Hes a smug unhappy little man who needs a dose of cyanide in his rat broth.
Abandon all hope ye who enter here...
Here's a link to an image of the Earth at night. Look at the border of the Koreas. North is dark, South is lit up. Many entire provinces of North Korea have electricity less than half of each day.8 /earth lights02_dmsp_big.jpg"
"http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/020
North Korea doesn't even have an actual link to the Internet of its own. It's government web site is run by an ISP in (IIRC) Taiwan, and its only connection to the Internet is provided by a South Korean telecom company, which also hosts its IP addresses.
I'd be a lot more worried about a mercenary group like Dyncorp hiring a bunch of hackers. Give them a couple million bucks to hire a herd of hackers, set them up in Vanuatu with a couple of T3 lines and they could shut down entire countries. The biggest problem would be keeping them on-target rather than attacking each others machines. Security isn't a concern, since no one ever listens to us geeks.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
those hacking Koreans should try Robotussin DM
Not such a big deal...
I mean, it's mostly outback anyway, right?
Because ther isn't the slightest shred of evidence that this "hacking army" exists, or that any country, let alone Australia, is a "target". The original story came from South Korea, which is still officially at war with the North; this one came from some Australian rent-a-quote "security expert" who was probably asked hypothetical questions by a reporter trying to beat up a story on a slow news day (and our own Slashdot editors followed suit).
down under in their IT servers, that's what white racists deserve.
You go north korea.
the reason America resorts to violence so often is because it is The Lazy Path, and 'convenient means of disposing of ones problems' is a part of the American Psyche ...
Ah, yer just pissed cuz ya got yer asses kicked twice running. The second time you thought ya really had it all figured out... Europe was under yer thumb and the Brits were being bled dry. Then the Japs did that dumb thing and the Americans jumped in with both feet, right on yer head. Didn't help much that you got delusions of grandeur and tried to invade Russia, but that just accelerated the asskicking, it didn't change the outcome.
So now yer all about diplomacy and intellectual superiority, cuz talk is all ya got, and since ya got no real influence or responsibility, yer free ta say whatever you like. Won't matter none, anyway.
So if yer hot to solve problems, go solve 'em, steada armchair quarterbackin. Otherwise, STFU.
North Korea can have all the trade secrets they want. They're so messed up that they wouldn't be able to capitalize on any information they do obtain.
I'm pretty confident that if they had the complete plans and tooling for a lowly item like a dishwasher they still couldn't produce one.
paygo (the banana boy song) - with apologies to harry belafonte
pay-go, pay-ay-ay-go
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, no exaggeration
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
working hard the boy still smirks
(election come and we send him home)
unemployed are just dumb jerks
(election come and we send him home)
come little bubble boy, freepers love your gigglin'
(election come and we send him home)
come little bubble boy, watch his spittle flyin'
(election come and we send him home)
it's sputter, stutter, mutter, grin!
(election come and we send him home)
sputter, stutter, mutter, grin!
(election come and we send him home)
pay-go, pay-ay-ay-go
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, no exaggeration
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
oh bad osama bush is gonna get 'em
(election come and we send him home)
but now bush says he can forget 'em
(election come and we send him home)
it's sputter, stutter, mutter, grin!
(election come and we send him home)
sputter, stutter, mutter, grin!
(election come and we send him home)
pay-go, pay-ay-ay-go
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, no exaggeration
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
come little bubble boy, come and slap the table
(election come and we send him home)
come little bubble boy, show us you're unstable
(election come and we send him home)
pay-go, pay-ay-ay-go
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, that's a lie, no exaggeration
watch the monkeys fly outta his butt
We're a small-ish (couple hundred users) government agency office in the US (your tax $$$ at work reading and posting /. ;-p ) and we got sick of all the scanning and portknocking coming in from APNIC addresses too. One day our network admin said ENOUGH! and put a "deny" for both inbound and outbound traffic for all these netblocks:
x .x.x
61.x.x.x
202.x.x.x
203.x.x.x
210.x.x.x
211.
218.x.x.x
219.x.x.x
There's a lot of Japan, Australia and New Zealand in there too, but quite frankly nobody in our office has any legitimate business need to access anything outside of the USA or receive email from outside the US either.
Since that day we blocked all the APNIC stuff, the volume of "hackerish" traffic trying to come in, had abruptly screeched to an almost complete halt, except for a very small trickle coming from France, Belgium, Russia and a couple other eastern Europe countries, and we can easily log all that and pass those logs on to the Federal goons who take an interest in looking at that stuff.
Are we really supposed to lend credence to the threat of being hacked by a bunch of script kiddies whose leader is a marionette?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
please do,
nothing but spam comes out of china's serers. just create a iplist for iptables to parse and block the whole ip blocks used bu china...
North Korea is a horrible regime, and they are only getting more powerful as they aquire more nukes. The US should take them out now. The US should have taken out the Soviet Union after WWII. If they did, we wouldn't have to deal with this backwards regime in N. Korea right now. The US obviously does things in its own interests, but it is probably the most benign superpower ever. Other countries just have a bad case of penis envy...
The first thing those 500 hackers should do is figure out how to hack NASA and drop a spy satellite on Kim Jong Il's principal residence.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
It kind of brings this into question, if this is such a possibility. http://www.newswithviews.com/public_comm/public_co mmentary7.htm
but it's still what it's called
No. It is not what it is called. Carpet bombing is what you use to devestate an antire city or another huge chunk of landscape. Dropping a bunch of bombs on someone is not carpet bombing. What we did to Japan in WW2 was carpet bombing. What we did to Vietnam towards the end of the war was carpet bombing. There has been no carpet bombing in Iraq.
Why not just cut them off from the internet?
Because dictator Kim might throw a tantrum and pop a nuke if we cut off his porn!
War isn't the solution? Sorry, as horrible as war is (and it is horrible, we have shed far too much blood in places like Europe) sometimes it is the solution. Through war we gained our independence, secured our independence, ended slavery in the south, ended German and Japanese imperialism, liberated South Korea, and strangled the Soviet Union. Have we used force in places where it was not neccesary? We sure have, Will I excuse it? Nope. Is that the point of my getting on the soap-box? Nope.
You have an ill-informed sterotype that Americans think war is okay, we don't think war is okay, we understand that war is sometimes neccesary. Here is a quick question for you, how much peace did Chamberlin buy when he sold out the Sudetenland? How many people did he condemn to death in cities and camps and on the battlefield by failing to understand that tyrants can not be reasoned with? Our country wants war? You have failed to inform yourself on the anti-war demonstrations. Our country needs war? We need it for what exactly? Our economy is founded on the principles of war? Ah, that must be the military-industial complex boogeyman knocking on your door.
While I respect the opinions of Europeans, I find them just a bit hypocritical, for centuries past the Europeans waged uncountable wars. Have you ever read the history of Europe? It is a history of war, wars of conquest, wars of plunder, wars of religon. Have the EU mandated school books just whitewashed all of the blood spilled by europeans? Now that they are unable or unwilling to engage in war it suddenly becomes a 'bad thing'.
Your comment about no police state is not exactly true, our occupation of Germany and Japan was, for a period of time, technically a police state. It seems to have helped foster quite a bit of peace.
Let me guess, your response will be somethng along the lines of 'stupid, fat, lazy, gun toting, fox watching, SUV driving, baby eating, war mongering, racist, bigot, sexually repressed, religious fanatic, ignorant of anything outside your borders - have I forgotten any of the sterotypes you 'level-headed' Europeans like to use - American, if you don't think like us Europeans, you must be wrong.'
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
I don't think anyone cares if these systems are further hacked by NK crackers, and I don't think the abundance of these systems really indicates anything whatsoever about the general state of security in an area.
And, to me, these suggestions that Australian security may be a little lacking don't really seem to be substantiated. I think the general thinking overseas may be that an Australian is great to have around when one is having trouble with crocodiles, snakes or other wild animals but when it comes to locking down a system, maybe you better go for someone a little more orthodox. One gets the feeling that the butch image is thought of as a great quality for toughguy roles in movies. But it seems that just because you can't picture someone declaring that "that's not a tightly secured firewall configuration, this is a tightly configured firewall configuration" without sounding like a cheesy computer science school review it is thought that an Australian can't configure iptables as well as his/her foreign counterpart.
And for what it's worth, even if no Australian could even use a computer to type a letter to their mother, American females would still find us just as irresistible simply because of of our accents and dry senses of humor. :P
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Now that is valuable IP, and should be protected. Gaining that knowledge would advance their civilization by a thousand years!
How do you hire hackers?
It seems to me that you need to breed them, not in the traditional sense, but you need to find people with an incredibily broad skillset that want to use it for evil.
It may not be so hard in a country that's had a decade of internet access, but i just dont see how north korea will have that many people to choose from.
Sure anyone can download script kiddie exploits and run them, but i've always imagined that industrial espionage was quite a bit removed from that.
I have no proof, but I highly doubt that North Korea the government gives even a half-baked shit about North Korea the populace. The only interest is in the govt keeping the populace barely alive so they have subjects to rule.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
I think you're the doofus here.
Yes, the internet can route around specific failures, but it still has to go over some kind of physical link, and there are only a limited number of those going to North Korea. The internet is not some magical data genie that can take your bits anywhere, it requires a lot of infrastructure to get those bits from your house to Slashdot or China. We might like to think of the internet as a land of pure data and information, but it cannot exist without the physical layer.
Granted, it would require cooperation from China and Russia, but they could definitely be cut off it they pissed off the world too much with their 'hackers'. They definitely don't have links with South Korea or Japan. And the ability of the internet to route around failures is limited if everyone you network with wants to drop you off the network...
Perhaps you're used to a western country like the U.S. or Europe, where you can get a net connection anywhere and it has multiple redundant paths, but that is not what North Korea is like. North Korea probobly has less bandwidth going in and out than most major universities in the west. Also, you must realize that the NK gov't severely restricts their own networks, because they don't want their citizens to be 'contaminated' with foreign ideas and media.
From Wikipedia:
Telephones - mobile cellular: In November 2002, cell phones were introduced to North Korea and by November 2003, 20000 North Koreans had bought cell phones. On May 24. 2004 cell phones were banned. North Korea supposingly still have a mobile network in Pyongyang which is open for government officials and maybe foreigner, but not locals.
Telephone system: international: satellite earth stations - 1 Intelsat (Indian Ocean) and 1 Russian (Indian Ocean Region); other international connections through Moscow and Beijing
Internet Service Providers (ISPs): NA. North Korea has been testing its first Web portal http://www.kcckp.net/external_e/ (see also [1]).
In 2002 the first Internet cafe has opened ([2], [3], [4] ). It is connected via a line to China. Also, foreign visitors can link their computers to the Internet through international phone lines available in a few hotels in Pyongyang.
Yeah, I read this article and wondered if this would explain all the unsuccesful attempts at logging into my server as root (which is disabled, of course) from South Korean elementary schools, Australian universities, and a few hits from UC Irvine. I've had a steady stream since August.
Must be American script kiddies indeed, who can't tell the difference between South and North Korea ;-)
I think he's eating candels, and wiping his hands in his hair.
As if North Korea was the only country spying on other countries. I'm pretty sure North Korea secret service is a joke compared to the one from the US, Israel, the UK, France... From the US governemnt spying on Airbus for the benefit of Boeing, to Israel spying on the US so they can better influence it's middle east policy, everyone is spying on everyone.
I'm sure the NSA is really frightened by those 500 hackers...
I'm sure the other 100 have defected to South Korea since then, figuring they could get rich off of their newly acquired skills...or maybe they were just wanted something to eat.
no mate what you did in vietnam , laos and cambodia was called boxing , your planners worked out a box cant remember th exact dimensions and dropped the load on it destroying and killing everything . not nice at all.
I think you're the doofus here.
/.
You have insulted your parent poster, now I will insult you. it is the way of
You know precisely jack shit about networking. Why do post an "informative" correction about a subject you know nothing about?
Yes, the internet can route around specific failures, but it still has to go over some kind of physical link, and there are only a limited number of those going to North Korea. The internet is not some magical data genie that can take your bits anywhere, it requires a lot of infrastructure to get those bits from your house to Slashdot or China. We might like to think of the internet as a land of pure data and information, but it cannot exist without the physical layer.
You are a dumbshit. Ever hear of wireless networks? You can get satellite internet access for $100 a month. Even if there was no such thing as wireless magic data genie it would be impossible to cut off North Korea from the internet. Its not exactly rocket science to just bury miles and miles of cable all over the place. Incidentally, rocket science is a field which North Korea has been getting much better at lately. And no, we could not get China to cut North Korea's physical internet connections. You also do not know anything about international affairs.
Perhaps you're used to a western country like the U.S. or Europe, where you can get a net connection anywhere and it has multiple redundant paths, but that is not what North Korea is like. North Korea probobly has less bandwidth going in and out than most major universities in the west.
The Internet started as a military program. Do you actually doubt that North Korea's million man military has not built a world class network? Do you doubt that this incredibally expensive and vital network is not capable of carrying tcp/ip traffic?
As a side note to anyone that actually takes the "hacker school" threat seriously: If corperations or governments are not capable protecting their networks from 600 "hackers" who had never even been on the internet before they got a job in the government then their networks have probably already been hacked repeatedly. I don't care how smart Koreans are, they can't compete with real hackers who have grown up using the hardware.
bit trollent
Instead of cutting them off, why do these corporations (and government computers) with large amounts of "top secret" data have their computers connected to the internet in the first place? If security is so important, keep those computers on an INTRAnet with no access to the outside world; you can't hack what's not connected.
The problem is, with Iraq, we thought Saddam Insane might be attempting to build nuclear weapons. We believe that Kim John Mentally Ill already has nuclear weapons - he might use them if we were to come after him. Remember, the most dangerous adversary is often the one with nothing to lose.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
http://shit.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=125575
Seeing as we haven't got the beer over IP protocol working yet.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Hah, what i was implying was that either the North Korean hackers had cracked boxes in South Korea (elementary schools make sense, since they're usually not very secured and don't have any kind of IT staff on site to deal with security on a regular basis), or someone else did.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Since you're rambling a bit much, I'll summarize your points, and reply from there.
- Wireless network access can be had via satellites
- Even if North Korea cannot get satellite internet access, they will be able to lay cables
- China will not cut those cables
Am I correct so far?Your first point, that wireless internet access can be had for $100/month, is a bit of a fallacy; communication satellites servicing North American households are well below the horizon in North Korea. I know of no Asian efforts to maintain a satellite-based internet venture; most countries in Asia have population densities that would enable them to retain their ground-based infrastructure. Because of the respective countries' laws regarding trade with North Korea, no vendor in Japan or South Korea will sell them a pipe to North Korean government.
Your second and third points seem to go together; that they can lay cables, and presumably, they can lay their cables to China, where they will be protected from Western prying hands. The Chinese are more willing to cut North Korea off. The North Korea have lately been annoying Beijing with their incessant threats to the area's stability. Yes, Beijing has more things to worry about right now, like soft-landing their economy, but if Pyongyang thinks they can live off of Peoples' Republic of China's largesse, they would be seriously mistaken.
Considering how outdated even Soviet command and control systems were with regards to networking them, yes, I do seriously doubt North Korean Army to have anything remotely like what the American government has given their soldiers. Infrastructure-grade routers and such are surprisingly expensive, and given that they cannot afford to buy latest jets or keep their populace fed without outside aid, I doubt their capability to maintain a large infrastructure-grade network connection.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I wonder what Auscert would have to say about this?
There is a good book describing the Australian hacking scenes history. Download from:
http://www.underground-book.com/download.php3
`Underground' by Suelette Dreyfus
with research by Julian Assange
475 pages with bibliography
ISBN: 1 86330 595 5
Yeah, I'd say you did a pretty good job of summing up my points.
I know of no Asian efforts to maintain a satellite-based internet venture; most countries in Asia have population densities that would enable them to retain their ground-based infrastructure. Because of the respective countries' laws regarding trade with North Korea, no vendor in Japan or South Korea will sell them a pipe to North Korean government.
I don't know of any either, but considering that alot of business gets done in Asia, there must be a market for such a service. I'm sure there is a business willing to fill this niche, even if at a high cost. I would be very surprised if there was not a single satellite company providing internet access over asia willing to sell North Korea internet access. I'm sure that your right about the laws of Japan and South Korea not allowing trade with NK, but not all corporations doing business in Asia follow the laws of those two countries. And China, which im sure launches satellites over asia all the time definately doesn't. I also maintain that China would not cut off North Korea's internet access at America's request. Hell before Bush came to office and screwed up our "cameras in North Korean nuclear power plants" deal China was considered one of our most dangerous "enemies". What has changed?
Considering how outdated even Soviet command and control systems were with regards to networking them, yes, I do seriously doubt North Korean Army to have anything remotely like what the American government has given their soldiers. Infrastructure-grade routers and such are surprisingly expensive, and given that they cannot afford to buy latest jets or keep their populace fed without outside aid, I doubt their capability to maintain a large infrastructure-grade network connection.
North Korea has shown on countless times that it is quite willing to let its people starve while spending phat cash on its military. Technology and networking equipment only get cheaper with time. I'm somewhat surprised that Soviet Russia did not have a good military network, but before the 1990s (about when the USSR collapsed?) they were certainly not alone. Networking equipment has become much cheaper since then. Also, the late 1990s was a buyers market for networking equipment on account of the tech downturn. I wouldn't be surprised if North Korea picked up some Cisco routers on the cheap from the many company liquidation auctions which were happening at the time.
bit trollent
Well let's see...these PRK hackers are using Windows. You all know Windows right? Lots of holes in the program's security and they just can't dial into MSHQ as these are illegal, blackmarket programs. Most of their systems are Japanese-they love Sony computers and I believe I've seen PRK agents in Akihabara buying at the discount shops. You can tell them by the cheap Gumbie green suits they wear... So, given the limitations of these people, the low quality of equipment they use (Pentium 2's), the pressure they are under (failure = termination and a trip to the stewpot) you would think that this presents an opportunity for some skilled /. blackhat or greyhat to infiltrate their systems and find out what they are doing.
Fish....More than just sushi
500 (motivated) hackers with, say, a year to prepare? Say there were 50 strong hackers, each of whom needs only come up with two viruses: a single effective virus using standard CERT data, and another sleeper one that at a designated time wakes up to retrieve orders. Say another 50 worked on strategies to infiltrate backbones edge routers. And 50 developed a "grand finale" program designed to cripple the nets and corrupt any data they find. And the other 350 each has a year to disassemble and develop a crack on each of the most common OSes (a good freeBSD crack alone could probably effectively break the net for days). It would take months to repair; probably requiring sneakernets, FEDEX, and slowly growing disconnected networks before the internet could be reconstituted.
I read the article, and it turns out that the dreaded North Korean hacker squad hasn't gotten any new equipment since 1985, so they only have l33+ 0-dayz xplz for the C=64 and TRS-80. Also, their only source of caffiene is dirty bottled water with "JORT CORA" written in marker on the side.
Um... that shows that they are effective against a democracy, which I don't think anyone questions. Sanctions are utterly ineffective against a totalitarian government,
They also worked against Libiya .
And two weeks before going into Iraq, The US Government was crowing in the UN about how they were working against Iraq. The absence of WMD is proof that they were right when Colin Powell was telling the world that the Sanctions were working.
Funny how they get something right, only to then flipflop and turn the world against them.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Woops, let me correct .. not two weeks before going into Iraq .. two weeks before announcing they wanted to go into Iraq. Silly me! :-)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
hah hah, you're amazing. 'assclown' .. oooh .. impressive!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
just get bush the idiot out of power first.