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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."
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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...
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.
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.
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.
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. --
1. Create security firm in your neighborhood.
2. Write paranoid article in local journal.
3. Profit!
What if NK peer with countries that wont do it on request? So are you going to cut off all the uncooperative countries that peer with NK? What about countries that peer with them (and so on down the chain until you find a cooperative country - and bang, you jsut lost a bigger chunk than you initially wanted)? What about NK using dialup in another country? What about NK agents in other countries?
/. story), and can be classed as unreliable imho.
Plus these 'reports' are from South Korea (as shown in the last
"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. --
It's typically worms that are scanning you. The reason they originate from places like Korea (most the scans I've seen are actually SOUTH Korea, not North.) and Taiwan is that they don't have the network or system security posture most in the west do. I can tell Austrailia's security isn't as strong as ours as I see some of the same worm looking scans coming from systems there.
Probably yet another of those notice us! notice us! type publicity stunt by N Korea.
Or perhaps a "notice us! notice us! type publicity stunt" by western security experts?
I note the article does not quote any North Korean sources
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!
Also don't forget to superglue their collective butts to North Korean soil. Otherwise you have no point.
...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.
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
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.
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.
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