North Korean Hackers Rival CIA?

Bitchslap_69 writes "According to a report in the South Korean paper Cho Sun Ilbo, North Korea 'employs 500-600 hackers who are tasked with hacking into computer networks and disabling enemy command and communication systems.' The person making this claim is Dr. Byeon Jae-jeong of the South Korean Defense Ministry's Agency for Defense Development (ADD). He claims the DPRK hackers to be 'equal to that of the CIA,' whatever that might mean."

Comments

Re:a few questions

[damsa]

North Koreans go abroad to study. Japan is especially popular. I've heard of North Koreans in US schools. But not sure if it is just a rumor.

How can Kim Jong Il be the only one with internet in North Korea, what about the sysadmin. Or what about the nerdy North Korean teenager that comes in and cleans out his spyware. Or how can he Pwn in Star Craft without internet. I guess he can go to Lan Parties, but that gets old, especially when your Monitor is like 1000 pounds.

How do they get trained hackers?

[gojomo]

Maybe they kidnap them from Japan.

See for example their history of doing the same to acquire knowledge about the outside world:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2087627/

Ever heard about the term botnet ?

[Gopal.V]

> The average cable modem user in America has more bandwidth than their entire country.

The country itself need not have enough bandwidth. Distributed DoS could take down a box using american zombie PCs. And let me tell you, there is no dearth of those. An attack from the inside of the network is perfectly possible - ever read Andromeda Strain ?. A compromised machine inside your network would need you to have a LOT of scissors :)

> It's hard to afford computers and network access when 99.9% of your GDP goes to support your military and feed your people.

Cyber warfare is military funded ... It is military without all the blood and guts routine - with all the Art of War fire tactics.