North Korean Hackers Rival CIA? 521
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."
Food (Score:3, Interesting)
well.. (Score:4, Interesting)
And, second of all: Having experienced the wrath of korean hax0r's myself, while playing Counter-Strike, I can easily believe this.
why is south korea saying this? (Score:2, Interesting)
Dupe(?) + My thoughts.... (Score:3, Interesting)
If the CIA or any other world famous security organization have their act together, all the 'good stuff' is on an internal computer network that has ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION TO THE INTERNET (or any other form of 'at large' telecommunications). This is very important as it is impossible to break into such a system -- there is no 'front door' to use to gain access. The usual procedure is to have two computers side by side: one on the secure internal network and the other connected to the internet/unsecure network. A human being is required to type information from the insecure PC to the secure one and vice versa. In this setup, the only way the secrets can get out is if the human in this situation is incompetent, being blackmailed (and told no one who can help them), or an outright traitor -- there are no other alternatives.
There is a slight chance of passively picking up the secret stuff with a so called TEMPEST attack but surely the IT people at these kind of organizations have already taken measures to make such attacks effectively impossible.
Re:War in Iraq (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Whatever! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:this isn't news (Score:4, Interesting)
And back on topic. The story is total crap. Yes I'm sure they have an elite hacking crew of 4 people (2 of which remote in from Romania) and have access to all the greatest Tandy 2k technology. This is nothing more than typical NK we are super propaganda. Remember Total Destruction is Inevertibly Inevertible!
Re:This just in, North Korea has an army too! (Score:5, Interesting)
Iraq was supposed to be a pushover, with terrain perfectly suited for the U.S. (see Gulf War I), had only Russia as a half-hearted partner.
North Korea has been girding for this fight ever since the Korean War armistice. They have a major Asian capital held hostage by 50 years worth of artillery emplacements. They are also right in China's backyard, and China, while completely uninterested in the North Korean regime, doesn't want some flood of hungry refugees when they are busy dealing with millions of their own rural workers looking for jobs. That's why none of this has gone to the U.N.: China has enough power to keep the U.S. from steamrolling them; Russia had no choice but to let Iraq get smacked around.
The U.S. would certainly prevail in a North Korean war, but millions of Koreans would die, with untold damage to a major economy. Samsung, LG, Hyundai, etc., are real economic players [try naming an Iraqi multinational]. Now, Japan getting nuked by North Korean warheads might be equally disastrous, so there is at least one way this could spiral out of control, but this is a war that NOBODY wants.
That said, the Bush administration has been bungling the situation from day 1, particularly because the proper order of threats was 1) North Korea, 2a) Al-qaeda 2b) Pakistan 3) Iran 4) Iraq, and they started at #4, put #2b on the wrong list, and by attacking #4 managed to spook #3 and #1 enough to make the situation even trickier. Their only policy achievement in NK is a totally non-functional diplomatic arrangement that they screw up with the most childish kind of namecalling.They may very well bungle enough to get the war they don't want.
Re:This just in, North Korea has an army too! (Score:2, Interesting)
right. North Korea is a great country to live in.
Liberals are funny. They would rather have famine than an attempt to save these people. 1,000,000 people could be starving in the hands of a maniacal dictator, but still the U.S shouldn't get involved (in fact, they are the ones that are the dictatorship).
if the U.S was actually that bad, there would be no protestors or people speaking out against the president. They would all be dead. (maybe Iraq is better. They had a vote for president before the war, and Sadaam won by 100%).
The U.S. even allows left-wing propaganda such as farenheit 9/11 to be played in movie theaters across the country. With the considerably low tax rate and more freedoms than almost every other country in the world, I would say that the U.S is a pretty good place to live. It seems most protesters would rather live in the U.S. and bitch about how shitty it is to live here than actually move to a country they seem to think is better (which is probably because they don't know of one).
Re:This just in, North Korea has an army too! (Score:3, Interesting)
Read a little about what happens in N. Korea, from the people who have escaped. It'll make your skin crawl.
Re:well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure that the CIA's job these days is just to tell Bush whatever it is he wants to hear.
According to this New Yorker article [newyorker.com], Bush and the CIA don't like each other. Bush basically made his own personal Intelligence Agency inside the Pentagon. The President pretends that this "task force" doesn't have to provide answers about their acts to Congress.From the article:
Re:Food (Score:3, Interesting)
You think that they lack funds to feed people? Yeah sure, just like Ethiopia lacked the funds and ability to feed their people in the 80's and 90's. Oh wait, I forgot about the hundreds of tons of food that just rotted on the docks while the ruling class held parties and banquets that cost millions of dollars a night. Sorry, but hunger, starvation, and death are the primary tool and self appointed right of a power-centric/communistic government. Remember that the only capital to spend in that government structure is the people. And, just like the capital we have, it can be wasted on whims and thrown away wantonly by those in power. Even worse is the fact that a portion of their country has to be destroyed in this way to make sure that the government stays in power.
And people criticise the USA for being a war-crimes and civil rights abuser of the highest caliber. In a world where the systematic starvation of the majority of a country's population recieves massively less attention than someone putting hood on a guy's head and making him take his clothes off, I wonder if there can be any solution to the problems that plague those of us who react with indignancy to violence and injustice.