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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."
... 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.
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.
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.
Yeah well, they should stop giving hackers from N Korea moderation rights anyway... :)
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
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!
Echelon is a perfectly known and adkowledged spy network. It surely is not in the conspiracy theory domain anymore. And a report from the European Commission proves the stealing of European Companies trade secrets and subsequent use of said trade secret by US companies (Boeing being the most well-known exemple).
Welcome in the new world!
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.
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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
...... should have kept it an island for criminals I tell ya....
-=Linsys=-
http://www.intrusionsec.com
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. --
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.
Better idea: Spam them with GOATSE wallpapers for their desktops. They want "IP", give em more than they can stand!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
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.
Amen to that, any company (or individual, or government department) really serious about security practices physical seperation (when possible) with a strictly controlled, non-constant, individual data transfer across the physical gap (ie. no network interconnection, even for a limited amount of time) in addition to using all "ordinary" security measures. Not too many companies so far but I've seen some do it.
However most governmental systems seem to not do this well enough or be able to... North Korea (or any other cybercombatant) wont hack personal webpages or the mom'n'pop shop, they'll hack the power distribution grid, big corporate databases to introduce fiscal instability (this seems to be the weakest link as physically seperating it defeats its purpose and is basically the same method of operation as Osama Bin Laden but by different means; a "quick way" to manipulate markets for enormous gains), gridlock choice network areas (routers, DNS, DDoS) and similar unless they're just snooping.
The North Korean "crackers" are probably closer to scriptkiddies though, but it's not something one wants to underestimate (some kiddies learn).
this comment is provided "as is" and without any express or implied legibility or congruity [...]
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.
Wow, that Korean hacker training program must be tough... there were 600 of them a week ago.
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
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 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.
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