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S. Korea's Cyberwar Against N. Korea's Nukes
An anonymous reader writes "Yonhap News Agency reports that South Korea has announced it is developing offensive cyber-capabilities to target North Korea's nuclear facilities. Yonhap speculates the tools will be similar to the Stuxnet computer virus the U.S. used against Iran's uranium enrichment program. A report in The Diplomat questions this assertion, noting that a Stuxnet-like virus would only temporarily disrupt Pyongyang's ability to build more nuclear weapons, while doing nothing to address its existing ones. Instead, The Diplomat suggests Seoul is interested in developing cyber-capabilities that temporarily disable North Korea's ability to launch nuclear missiles, which would be complement Seoul's efforts to develop precision-guided missiles to preemptively destroy Pyongyang's nuclear and missile facilities."
Just how exactly are they going to disrupt Best Korea? Send a man up with a hammer to start smashing all the vacuum tubes?
Don't need to be. Stuxnet got into Iran's offline nuclear program computers on a USB stick. The trick is making a really hellaciously virulent bit of malicious software, something that can become a global-level nuisance, and in time it'll find its way onto the target machines.
http://www.wired.com/threatlev...
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
The trick is making a really hellaciously virulent bit of malicious software
The other trick is not blabbing to the press about what your intentions are.
To say there were "NO COMPUTERS" is pretty inaccurate. There were no microprocessors, yes, but there were analog computers as far back as 1872 and they were used extensively during the first World War. Modern computers were initially developed as a direct result of WWII threatening to erupt in Europe. The British Colossus was used during the war by codebreakers - ten variations of it was in use before the war was over. Over in the US, the ENIAC was created to help with the war effort - including the construction of the hydrogen bomb. They weren't terribly sophisticated by today's standards, but it wouldn't be a leap to assume N. Korea has gotten their hands on something magnitudes more powerful - even a 1970's era computer.
Whilst horribly under-equipped & outdated, North Korea has the largest army of foot-soldiers/infantry in the world. Adding that Seoul is also only 35km from the NK border, I wouldn't want to place any bets. If the North goes down, it'll take the South with it & flood China's already delicate border regions with a huge number of refugees.
Unless it gets taken down from the inside, I don't expect to see any changes in NK during my lifetime.
Any foot soldiers trying to walk across the border would be destroyed by air support. When it comes to stopping advances and toppling a government, foot soldiers aren't really relevant.
That being said, NK doesn't even need nukes to threaten South Korea. The thousands of artillery emplacements in range of Seoul are all that are needed to destroy the city.
NK wants the nukes to fend off the US, not South Korea.