Postcard From Pyongyang: The Airport Now Has Wi-Fi, Sort of (apnews.com)

Eric Talmadge, writing for AP: North Korea is one of the least Wi-Fi-friendly countries in the world. Having a device that emits Wi-Fi signals can result in detention and a major fine. Worse, if you are a North Korean. Public use of the internet is a concept that just makes North Korean officials really nervous. But here's a sign that might be changing. North Korea's main internet provider appears to have put up a Wi-Fi trial balloon at the international departure area of Pyongyang's airport. It's a logical place to start. The service is only available, or even visible, to travelers who have already cleared customs, which included me last week. The reporter was unable to actually get the Wi-Fi to work, however.

Comments

Re:Honey ...

[ShanghaiBill]

A honeypot doesn't work if you can't log in. This is an example of Hanlon's Razor.

The Norks have figured out how to build and launch ICBMs, but setting up a functioning Wifi hotspot is still beyond their capability.

Re:How do you know?

[SuperKendall]

What does it mean to "blow out" a TCP connection?

As part of the negotiation setting up a WiFi connection there is a lot of back and forth, with a lot of opportunity to attack the code around this process. I don't know why a non-programmer would be on Slashdot, but blowing out a connection STACK means overflowing buffers or other similar attacks that would allow the device pretending to be a wiFi node to inject running code on the device that tries to connect. Look at the various types of datagrams here which you can mangle in various ways to try and attack a system.

I also don't see what "cheap" has to do with it.

They are less likely to be supported and updated with security patches.

They are running the same networking software on the same core hardware (ARM) as more expensive Android phones.

Um, no. They are generally running OLDER versions with known vulnerabilities, and over time will be even more vulnerable as more exploits are discovered and the devices remain un-pacthed because they are, well cheap and no-one cares. This is pretty basic stuff dude.

Don't have time to give you a whole computer security course so I'll let you have the last response. But you really should do more research before you post.