S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers 535
maggeth writes "The Financial Times is reporting that North Korea's military and intel services have trained as many as 600 computer hackers specifically for attacks against South Korea, Japan, and the US. South Korea claims that the north has a five-year university program for hacker training and cites recent attacks on government computer systems. The South Korean defense ministry claimed in the report that 'North Korea's intelligence warfare capability is estimated to have reached the level of advanced countries,' and that the caliber of the North's hackers is high. So far it appears that these specific attacks are based in China, although it is not clear if North Korea is using Chinese networks or if China is involved."
If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:5, Funny)
I understand why they say they are starving !
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:4, Funny)
So? I'm sure the NSA and GCHQ have their own highly trained crackers. What exactly is the point of this article? It kinda points out the obvious, something that has been true for many years. Electronic warfare has existed since the invention of the radio jammer. The extension to this onto the net is inevitable.
The question is, should we invade? Do the have any oil?
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, it's pretty interesting that the attacks on S. Korean computer systems seemed to be based in China. If this were indeed true (doubtful), this would cast doubt on dubbya's assertion in the debate that bilateral talks with N. Korea will alienate China, which is supposedly imposing some kind of leverage on N. Korea.
Re:Watch that first step, it's a doozy! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're joking, right? What do you expect hospitals to do, isolate a bunch of servers in miscellaneous locations and force people to print and walk medical records from one place to another? Do you expect air traffic control to build it's own cutoff communications medium that only interoperates with other towers and facilities? Do you expect banks to force people to perform all of their transactions in isolated physical locations?
That is probably the dumbest piece of technical input I've ever heard in my entire life, and I'm not the least bit surprised that it came from a clueless /bot. The logistics and cost behind isolating ever single institution would be staggering and would go against the core promise of the worldwide communication capabilities of the internet anyway. The solution isn't to isolate every damn thing, it's to make sure that those things are sufficiently locked down. From a technical perspective, in fact, much of the banking industry IS well protected. The human attack vectors may not be very solid, but the technical ones, largely, are.
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. I'm in Vietnam and the quality of their comrades here is nothing to be frightened of.
Key word is "trained". Trained by whom? You're not going to learn much when you don't have the equipment, you're hungry, and you have to spend six hours a day in political indoctrination classes.
Anyone with talent *and* internet access will be busy looking over their shoulders because they'll naturally be on the "highly susupicious" list at the Ministry of Culture. And they'll want to devote at least of few hours' worth of that talent to making some extra cash to make sure their families can put an extra cabbage in the pot.
Then remember it'll be easy to know which direction to look for these hackers. The only place a North Korean hacker is not going to stick out, or the only place he can afford to live, is China.
This article is just trying to scare us. They had nothing better to write about. Nothing to worry about; nothing to see here.
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:3, Informative)
Both stories are guaranteed to go all the way around the world becauase of their newsworthiness. They are both impossible to verify. Both caters to technology fear and fears about "what will the dangerous future bring".
So I belive that both stories are pro
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone with talent *and* internet access will be busy looking over their shoulders because they'll naturally be on the "highly susupicious" list at the Ministry of Culture
In the DRPK annyone with internet access at all is already part of the state's techno elite and de facto an agent.
The only place a North Korean hacker is not going to stick out, or the only place he can afford to live, is China.
Why not South Korea or Japan? And goverment agents can probably afford to live anywhere.
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:3, Interesting)
And don't think that N. Korean agents just hang out there. They spread out. N. Korea has been known to kidnap foreign nationals (Japanese, for instance) to train their a
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:2)
"nearly 300 South Korean government computers
really? millions of computers are infected with viruses worldwide, all i see from this is a lack of south korea administrators. It's obvious that in a country where every house has broadband the levels of virus infections would be higher than the rest of the wor
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe this is the true aim. You know, people are morer willing to learn about and take security measures if there's some concrete threat, at best from a "known evil". A general "it's dangerous in the woods" is far less likely to be successful than "in the woods there are wild animals which will kill you", let alone "you know, in the woods there's that wulf which already has killed someone, and there's a whole pack of other wolves as well"
Re:If true, the stakes are now higher. (Score:3, Insightful)
And how can we be screwed? Pray tell. Do those hackers have magical powers or something? Do you think they can take out the internet permanently with clever VB viruses? Or DOS attacks? Do you think that those hackers can social engineer their way into getting US government/corporate passwords/manuals?
I doubt it. Any attack they make will only make the internet stronger and more resilient. Besides, it's the virus of the mind N Korea should be worrying about. Just you wa
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
Forget binary trees and linked lists. Lets get straight to studying MS buffer overload vulnerabilities and haxor tactics...
Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
Intereting that you use L.A. as an example of how a high tech area looks like.
The first time I went to L.A. I was surprised how low tech the area looked like to me, especially with regards to the electricity and telephone lines blocking the view of the sky and the lack of modern public transport.
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
There is another theory that states that this has already happened. ;-)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Funny)
If I was called a "cracker" I would be kind of worried about what you just said!
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
Is there a north korean linux user group? Actually, joking aside, the US is more interested in bombing the shit out of North Korea than making any gestures of help for these people.
Now, if the US were at war with N.Korea right now, it would be so politically incorrect to say that.
Of course, it is not as if when GWBush gets re-elected that suddenly N.Korea will have some unquantifiable threat to the world, and maybe
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is where the problem lies. We are giving them food. However, the North Korean government is re-appropriating this food for its own purposes. Besides that, the only reason they can't grow all the food they need is because the best farming land is reserved for opium, by mandate of the North Korean government. (The War on Terror intersects the War on Drugs. And there was much rejoicing.)
So let's see what options exist:
1) Bomb the fuck out of the North Korean military and invade. Problem: a modern government/military is comprised of "the people." Maybe an invasion would turn out like a bloodier Iraq on the front end, but it would surely be more worthy an action.
2) Disable the WMDs covertly, then negotiate now that they have no leverage. This is very risky and not likely to work.
3) Continue the economic sanctions on North Korea, but continue to give humanitarian aid. Same as usual, with no progress.
4) Completely cut off North Korea from the rest of the world, except China (probably). Does no good.
Kim Jhong-Il (sp) is entirely different from Saddam. Kim is a rising star as far as dictators are concerned, and Saddam was old and busted. Besides, North Korea has the WMDs.
In short: Yeah, I'd rather not see bombs. But the food is never going to get into the hands of the North Korean people as long as Dr. Evil over there is still in charge.
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
I'd say develop a GM pest that attacks opium and send it in.
Then offer them a bone, and get them to talk in politics.
Read Gaurds Gaurds! (sorry to over siplify) but by negotiating using a carrot can be better than a stick.
Offer them something more, but on terms that makes it difficult to go back on.
Of course, again, over simplifying. Sorry. (i'd make a crap politician! I haven't got the money for it anyway!)
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem, of course, isn't one of a vietnam-style conflict, it's one of the North leveling Seoul to the ground via conventional arms. In every single conventional-arms scenario, Seoul is lost before the war is won.
Re:Interesting... (Score:2, Interesting)
the highest estimate for north korean opium farms is 7000 hectares. Since they have 1,200,000 hectares of farmland this is not the reason for their food shortage.
note: the original fields where created by the Japanese during their invaison period so it interesting that NK is a big supplier of opium based recreational products to Japan now.
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you have any suggestions? The international community would be very happy to hear it if you actually came up with something workable.
The problem is that North Korea is both dangerous and oppressive on a scale that makes Iraq look like Luxembourg by comparison. While Iraq's people were somewhat poor and rather oppressed, North Korea is systematically crushing, murdering, and starving its people. It is more or less the crushing poverty and famine you would think typical of Ethopia with a government so tyrannical and powerful that it would make Stalin proud. The whole thing is run by nutjobs who are so into the cult of personality that the current President has been dead for over ten years and they still can't stand to remove him from the office.
Despite having an economy that is smaller than a medium-sized American city, and being full of starving people, this country has one of the largest and most powerful armies in the world. This is accomplished by spending almost one quarter of their entire GDP (note: not budget, but GDP) on the military. By contrast, the US spends about 3.3% of its GDP on its military.
North Korea is many things Iraq was not. It is genuinely, horribly oppressive. (Iraq's regime was evil, but not any more evil than dozens of other countries.) It has an actual, credible military threat to our allies in the region. (Seoul would be more or less flat within hours of the beginning of a war.) It has a great possibility of making life very difficult for any invaders, because of its gigantic army, the fact that the terrain is incredibly mountainous, and its people have been trained from birth to believe that their government is all that stands between them and a world bent on turning them into slaves. North Korea is also a pariah in the international community in a way that Iraq never was. The only country that even pretends to be friendly with them is China, and they only do it because it's a bad idea to piss off an army of a million fanatics sitting on your doorstep.
Oh, did I mention that this delightful place either has nuclear weapons or could produce them within a year if they so chose? Did I also mention that they have ballistic missiles with enough range to hit some targets on the west coast of the US? Another thing that's different from Iraq; they actually have WMD, and their leader is probably crazy enough to consider using them even if it meant the certain death of himself and 99% of his people.
Sending food, money, or anything else will not help these people. The North Koreans are suffering not because of abject poverty or famine, but because their government is totally insane. The poverty and famine is just a side effect.
The current plan seems to boil down to saying "nice doggy" and hoping that something changes. Leaving things as they are is not really acceptable, given that they will only increase their capacity to do murder and mayhem in the world at large. Invasion is pretty much out of the question, given the difficulty of protecting our allies in the region and the difficulty of actually winning. Engineering a collapse is out of the question for similar reasons; the only thing worse than having a million-man army lead by total wackos on your doorstep is having a the remnants of a million-man fanatical army suddenly stripped of its leadership and left to fend for itself, not to mention the nuclear weapons factor.
If you can come up with some kind of plan to help out, that would be great. The current worldwide consensus seems to be "pretend that there really isn't a problem, and hope that I'm out of office by the time it reaches the crisis point."
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's pretty much the most insightful thing I've read here in a long time, and pretty much sums up what's wrong with democratic capitalism as we have it at the moment.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Anarchism. It works for *all* the rest of nature.
For a suitable definition of "works".
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
How have completely failed to identify any threat in North Korea. [read on!]
They have a sucky country - they are all mad, they have weapons. [ok, read on]
What do they want? Does anyone know? Has anyone asked? [that was my point]
Are the hell bent on world domination? Are thier WMD's a symptom of aggressive sanctions or western sympathy for S Korea.
Has S Korea been jibing them about taking back the land?
Sorry - but
Re:Interesting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Means I already discussed.
Opportunity is there every day. It's just one order to send their army rushing across the DMZ into South Korea, start producing nukes, or launch those nukes at the US.
That brings us to motive. As you recognize, that's the most complicated piece of the whole thing. I don't entirely understand this part, but I'll do my best.
Korea's history in the 20th century isn't very happy. It spent most of the first half of the century under Japanese occupation. The Japanese were not known as particularly friendly occupiers (this is putting it much nicer than it should be). As the Second World War came to a close, Korea got liberated from two directions at once, with the US coming in from the south, and the USSR coming in from the north. Just as in Germany, the two sides immediately set up governments that were loyal to them. Of course, the US claimed that South Korea was an independent ally, and North Korea was a puppet to the Russians. The USSR claimed the opposite. Presumably the truth was in between.
Anyway, to cut the story short, war happened, with each side getting lots of assistance (and presumably more than a few orders) from their superpower allies. Each side saw the other side's system as fundamentally evil, and something that had to be stopped, but pragmatically there was nothing more to do. Like in Germany, the two sides were forced to deal with each other. Unlike Germany, the two sides had spent years fighting each other in war, and relations were much colder. The two Germanies kept reasonably close all through the Cold War, but the two Koreas were (and still are) separated by the most heavily fortified border on the planet, just waiting for somebody to twitch and start another war.
Fast forward a few decades, to the 90s. Communism collapses or transforms worldwide. By 1992, the remaining countries that are still actually Communist (and not just calling themselves that) have dwindled to, basically, Cuba and North Korea. North Korea's two big traditional allies, Russia and China, have basically converted to the other side and are busily making friends with the West. China is still Communist in name, and still making friendly gestures to North Korea, but nothing significant.
Motive for the leaders depends on whether you think they are idealistic or pragmatic. If they're idealistic, then North Korea is pretty much the last bastion in the world for Communism. The Imperialist Capitalists have conquered pretty much the rest of the planet. If they're pragmatic, it's almost the same, just with a cynical touch; the entire power structure depends on the rigid Communist system. They fear, rightly or not, that reforms will destroy their government.
Motive for the people is simpler, since they hear what their government wants them to hear. The fact that the US has had troops in South Korea for over fifty years doesn't help. Never mind that it's not an occupying force; government propaganda excels at twisting the truth in subtle ways.
The three disaster scenarios are collapse, conventional attack, and nuclear attack. Collapse doesn't need a motive, of course, since it wouldn't be intentional. Both attack scenarios share a motive; they provide hostages to secure the country's safety (the inhabitants of Seoul for the conventional attack, the inhabitants of Seattle or San Francisco for the nuclear option). Conventional attack has another potential motive, which is conquering/liberating the South. Take the fact that diplomatic communications with North Korea are almost nil, combine it with the fact that the North's leaders are incredibly paranoid, and you have a situation which is ripe for misunderstandings. MAD only works well when both sides are rational and communicating with each other. It is entirely conceivable that a move which we think is non-threatening could be interpreted as something which needs a response.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Insightful)
Everybody else in the world understands that North Korea violating an agreement means "I want to re-negotiate the terms of this agreement." The Bush administration, under the tutelage of that complete moron Wolfowitz, decided that "toughness" would yield better results. Talks ceased. The only result is that N. Korea (in their minds) were forced to up the ante.
So we went from close inspect
Re:Interesting... (Score:4, Insightful)
I disgaree with much of your post, but I'm going to focus on this part: NK doesn't care about a PR disaster. They have no compunction about starving their own people and creating concentration camps on a scale not seen since the Soviet Union; there is no indictation that they would have any qualms about using nuclear weapons in a war. Even if NK isn't in a war, they've demonstrated a willingness to sell virtually any technology they possess, and that may include operational nuclear weapons. As bad as invasion may be, it would still be better than The Bomb smuggled into Los Angeles*.
We can't ignore NK because ignorning the problem makes it grow: today they may have five nuclear weapons; tomorrow that number may jump to 20. Today they may have operational 2-stage missiles; tomorrow they may have true ICBMs.
Our approach to Islamic terrorism was ignore it and hope it goes away. The failure of that approach has already been demonsrated.**
* This doesn't mean I advocate invasion: I don't for a variety of reasons. I'm only presenting a hypothetical scenario and am not implying a future in which situation A OR B will happen, because obviously we live in a more complicated world than that.
** I'm not equating the parent poster's position to advocating for terrorism, and I don't think if you're not with us you're against us, or whatever else the current administration claims. But the threats (terrorism, NK), although not identical, both show a tendency to grow with time.
Moral Relativism Rears Its Ugly Head (Score:4, Insightful)
You just summed up, in one paragraph, what's so utterly wrong with the left. Evil, sir, is not subjective. Oppressing and starving your people is not just "doing your own thing within an ideological context". By this reasoning, no system can ever be wrong. Nazism can be excused because invading your neighbors and shipping Jews off to ovens just becomes "just doing your thing". Communism becomes just fine because creating gulags becomes "just doing your thing".
When those airliners smashed into the Twin Towers, were the hijackers just "doing their own thing"?
Ideas have consequences, especially when put into practice. And evil exists, and must be oppossed. We can debate how best to do it, but to suggest that it doesn't exist at all, that we shouldn't judge on conduct or ideals, is to become complicit in the act of monsters, to become part of their crimes ourselves.
Re:Interesting... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course I would be. A quick google refers to a non-flight tested system that has between a 3000km and 9000km flight radius (reported) according to it's size, but thrutch is one part of the equation...guidance systems are another. If you read down the page, you'll notice that the information is between 4-5 years old with the indicator that they've tested the engines on stands. Guess what was announced this year as well?
Intelligence sources are almost non-
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Re:Interesting... (Score:2)
Fourth largest army in the world. Though mostly due to the fact that being in the army is the best way to survive. You have to wonder how many NK personnel would defect if it came to combat.
Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
See http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/C/cracker.html [catb.org]
and then this:
http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html [catb.org]
I myself am personally offended when people think that hackers are malicious.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
don't
when people think that hackers are malicious
They do, and they will for a long time to come.
Re:Huh? (Score:3)
That may be so, however I am personally offended when people refuse to accept that languages evolve - words in common use which have different meanings to much of society is a major part of the evolution of any language.
which is better (Score:4, Funny)
A: to be able to have a hundred or so crackers attack a web site at your demand or
B: to be able to publish an article linking to them and therefore slashdot their communications into oblivion?
Check the source! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Check the source! (Score:2)
Re:Check the source! (Score:2, Funny)
Believeable or not? (Score:2, Funny)
Hacked by Koreans (Score:5, Interesting)
Seconds he and I both received warnings from our firewalls that we were under attack by a variety of means. The originating IP addresses were in Seoul.
Based on that, I wonder if the South Koreans have/had compromised a North Korean web-server.
Re:Hacked by Koreans (Score:2)
Could even have been entirely coincidental and nothing to do with the website we were viewing.
Poor guys (Score:4, Funny)
Speaking of 1995... (Score:3, Funny)
ddos as the equivalent of a nuke? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke? (Score:2)
Re:ddos as the equivalent of a nuke? (Score:3, Interesting)
S. Korea Claims N. Korea Has Trained 600 Crackers (Score:3, Funny)
I'll take this story with a grain of salt :)
Five years? (Score:3, Funny)
Jokes aside,... No I have one more.
Judging from the Koreans I've met playing online games, maybe 1 year is spent learning-to-hack; the other 4 are spent learning the social skills needed to relieve passwords by means of human to human attacks.
Dear N.Korea (Score:4, Funny)
(mildly edited for 14mn3ss filterz_)
i would
courtesy of http://rinkworks.com/dialect/
Original [interesting]:
I would like to join your elite group of computer people and do elite things like script viruses and talk to girls in funny ways. My mum says it is ok, and can I also use your network to download naughty movies.
thanks
bill
Scary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Scary (Score:2)
Re:Scary (Score:3, Insightful)
Yawn. (Score:4, Funny)
> DISABLE ECONOMY
> You cannot do that here.
> EXAMINE CYBER INFRASTRUCTURE
> Access Denied.
> HIT ECONOMY WITH STICK
Sorry NTK.net! (Score:2)
http://www.ntk.net/ballmer/mirrors.html
Steve 'Monkey Boy' Ballmer [please news-wires, use his official title!]
Just cut the cables. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just cut the cables. (Score:2)
Re:Just cut the cables. (Score:2, Interesting)
and then it happens (Score:4, Funny)
In capitalist USA (Score:2, Insightful)
compare Korea with Iran (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:compare Korea with Iran (Score:4, Interesting)
Or how many sponsors of the Anasair X-Prize were Iranian, for that matter (the Ansaris are Iranian!) Guess the axis of evil 'accidentally' sponsored the first commercial astronaut in the US. How... evil?
Re:compare Korea with Iran (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure it did... it let its people emigrate. NK doesn't seem to do that.
Given how much profiling is being done to find terrorists of arabic descent, you might want to be careful about saying the US gov't doesn't claim place of birth as making you potentially evil, by the way. That's what profiling does.
Re:compare Korea with Iran (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news... (Score:3, Interesting)
This is just FUD by South Korea against it's arch enemy, and even if it isn't, so what? How many crackers are employed by the CIA? The Mossad? MI5? Or even the RIAA & MPAA?
It amazes me that the general public of Western countries and their allies are so goddamn afraid that these absolutely piece of shit countries that can't even feed their own populace are any threat to anyone save mentioned populace.
ANY Western country could kick serious ass in Afghanistan, Iraq or North Korea (though not with zero casualities). These countries have no tech. None. How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?
They are the human wool pulled over our eyes to keep us from looking at our own corrupted civilzation and political system.
Rant over.
if only it were so simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Sanctions may make it harder for the man in the street to buy computing equipment, but they cannot stop a determined state form getting what is so widely available in the rest of the world. So if North Korea wants hacking hardware, they can get it.
It doesn't really matter how poor the average person is, or how little food or power or money most groups have - if something is important to a dictatorship (like their own personal comfort, or security) it can be generously resourced. Think Saddam's palaces. So they can afford to train to hack.
Don't underestimate educational possibilities. Quality of education has very little to do with GNP - look at the dire state of public schools in the US. Training of the elite can be very effective in less rich countries - the most important thing is usually motivation. Actually, the US system also shows that resources CAN be concentrated to produce pockets of excellence! So if NK wants effective training, it's hardly impossible.
So they could train and resoure a significant number of hackers, if they wanted. The casual complacency of some here reminds me of the attitude of the WWII British in Singapore - just before the Japanese Army cycled round the back of the fortifications and invaded.
On the other hand, North Korea may not have done any of that. Or they may have tried, and been ineffective (though you don't have to be THAT good, to crack lots of systems). It's prudent to take precautions, but daft to panic.
As with any security question, consider what is the problem, whether the solution fixes it, what are the disadvantages of the solution, and whether the tradeoff is worth it. Most sensible precautions are already known - to sensible users and not a few slashdotters ;-)
And it's also worth looking at where the story came from, and when. Just because it's a South Korean defence agency doesn't make it untrue (they are in a better position to understand local threats than many outsiders). And the North is ratcheting up tension, by refusing talks. But beware of spin - both from those releasing the stoy, and those who want a pretext for new "security" measures...
Re:if only it were so simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. Sanctions (or blowing up power plants during war, et cetera) basically just mean "the populace suffers more, while the army still takes first pick of the resources".
Heck, even in the US currently, military funding is considered seperate from all other programs, and usually passed by Congress as a seperate budget item (often ignoring the rest of the economic pict
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the real question is, why would the US want to invade North Korea? They are showing signs of accepting a free market economy -- some areas have been designated as special free market zones, and this may spread throughout the rest of the country. Sure, they're far behind, but they can drag themselves out of this mess.
Re:In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem with the US army is that it can't fight insurgents and doesn't want to learn how. As an aside, the moment that the military started boasting about bodycounts, I knew the insurgency was winning. The military should be boasting about how many guerillas didn't appear and weren't killed, rather than how many grabbed guns with glee and got bombed (along with civilians), dying in glee (going to heaven...).
The US (as part of the UN) fought China and North Korea to a standstill. Only Chinese intervention saved North Korea - at the point a million Chinese 'volunteers' intervened, more than 90% of North Korea was occupied by US/UN troops.
North Korea is accepting a market economy to the same degree that Castro is a nice guy whose only vice is smoking cigars. Believe it and you're believing the complex lies of a regime who only excels in lies.
Re:In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Soldiers in sandals (Score:2)
How hard is it to drop fire one 'soldiers' with AK-47s and sandals?
I am not a soldier (at least not a professional one), but last time I checked there were still some 'soldiers with AK-47s' around Baghdad.
YES SIR GENERAL SIR!! (Score:3, Insightful)
You're right General! That worked amazingly well in Vietnam! The US really kicked that backwards low tech piece of shit country didn't it! The first war on Iraq kept them quiet FOREVER! Heck, everything is under control in Iraq and Afghanistaneven as we speak!
It is very difficult for an army that uses conventional tactics and tries to be mindful of the Geneva Convention and the Rules of Engagement to
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
NK is not a state... (Score:5, Insightful)
It routinely abducts Japanese and South Korean citizens just to keep NK spies trained (Kim, a movie buff, also had a director kidnapped so he could direct movies for his own enjoyment!).
Moreover, NK is the world's largest counterfeit money manufacturer and a major drug manufacturer. Oh, and it's into exporting weapons and missiles, too.
It is not only into illegal exports. It's also into massive-scale blackmail. It's been into nuclear blackmail for quite some time. Turning to cyber-blackmail was only a logical step.
When one is desperate for money, any buzzword-compliant threat will do.
This is not a country. This is SPECTRE.
Maybe the CIA should start training killer angora cats
This just in... (Score:3, Funny)
When reached for comment, George W. Bush was quoted as saying "Well gee them AOL folks rilly seemed nice, what with sendin out em free CDs 'n such, but I guesses, I mean I supposes if they was rilly just a new kinda technuh... technuh... nucular, uh, nucular-logical warfare device - yi'see like a weppin o' mass destrucshun 'n such - then I spozes we're gonna hav'ta bomb the livin daylights outta em varmints."
Elsewhere in the world, France has surrendered and is to be re-named "LOLOLOLOLOLOMG111`". When asked how the newly conquored country would be managed, AOL spokespersons simply pointed out that a small council would be appointed, comprised of the following individuals:
More news as it unfolds.
me too! (Score:2)
Do you think I could get a grant [esn.org]?
Well I, for one... (Score:2)
In A.D. 2004 War was beginning (Score:4, Funny)
South Korea: Somebody set up us the bomb.
South Korea: We get signal.
South Korea: What !
UN: Main screen turn on.
South Korea: It's You !!
North Korea: How are you gentlemen !!
North Korea: All your base are belong to us.
North Korea: You are on the way to destruction.
South Korea: What you say !!
North Korea: You have no chance to survive make your time.
North Korea: HA HA HA HA
Related or Coincidence? (Score:4, Informative)
I was quite disappointed when I tried to report it to the FBI and I got what was clearly and automated response that said, "This is not an automated response."
Also recently I was privy to a situtation where a computer in a school system was acting VERY strange and typing text in Word on its own that seemed half gibberish and half not but with text that could almost be confused for terrorist communications. The school system called the FBI and gave them the IP of the machine. The FBI said they were monitoring it to try to determine the cause. The only problem? It was a private IP address and impossible to monitor remotely.
I understand that the FBI probably guessed (quite correctly IMO) that the computer was infected with one of the new worms that uses the dictation engine, but they told the school they were monitoring which was a lie. Additionally, they sent me an e-mail that said it wasn't automated when it so clearly was. No wonder we had intelligence failures leading up to 9/11.
South Korea's annual cyberwar warning (Score:3, Interesting)
In the US (Score:3, Funny)
Never mind.
Official North Korean News Agency (Score:3, Informative)
Korean Central News Agency of Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea [kcna.co.jp]
Any government that can publish this with a straight face needs to be overthrown...
ironically, more truth than sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
you have to realize that most companies are forbidden to export anything to N.K. And to think the latency of the last explosion getting out - it's no wonder as there are 1.1million phone lines in a country of 22.7m people. cellular phone availability data is nonexistant, and all the phone are routed through beijing and russia.
sort of to answer the origial story, though - N.K. probably is using china's networks to get online not necessarily because china have anything to do it other than just selling them bandwidth (just like MCI could be selling bandwidth to western malicious internet personalities without knowledge). I do wonder if the said hackers have to contend with the firewall of china, though...
Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm (Score:2)
-HC
Re:ironically, more truth than sarcasm (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Does NK have 600 computers? (Score:2)
Re:Lol! Yeah, sure (Score:3, Insightful)
They work better at detering attack that way.
I mean, come on, if any of that was true Bush certainly would have attacked NK and not Iraq, that did not have ties with terrorists, did not posess WMDs and certainly didn't engage in cyber warfare.
Why would Bush want to attack somewhere which actually has WMDs, it would be worst than Vietnam for the US "body" count.
Re:Lol! Yeah, sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Curriculum at Hacker U.? (Score:3, Informative)