North Korea's School For Hackers? 386
Makoto writes "How do you launch a cyber-war with no IP infrastructure? South Korea claims that North Korea is training about 100 "cybersoldiers" per year in electronic warfighting tools and techniques, including writing viruses and hacking. But according to a story at Wired News, North Korea can barely keep its electrical grid up - not to mention feed its people. Even the Pentagon says North Korea's hacker academy is probably just propaganda by South Korea."
Or maybe it's true (Score:5, Insightful)
Why Not? (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news... we still have not found any weapons of mass destruction In Iraq despite our government telling us that they there.
Even if they do have a hacker school, so what? Like we here in the states do not teach a subset of our military these skills. Hacking is cheap and easy way of causing a lot of damage. It's a smart thing for them to try.
Davak
Re:Training (Score:4, Insightful)
So you're saying it's tougher to be a script kiddie than it is to, say, fly a commercial airliner?
You can teach anybody just about anything, and given a large enough population of people you can even find those who are naturally good at certain things to begin with. Or maybe you don't think that smart people would ever be opposed to America and its allies?
Re:Why Not? (Score:1, Insightful)
This does not shock me (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think any other problems North Korea may have has any bearing on whether or not they have high-tech hacking schools. I work for a large multinational and am repsonsible for IT in all areas outside US and Europe and the bushmen with bamboo computers and blow-guns myth is precisely that. Goddam Nigeria buys Pentium 4's, you think North Korea still uses vacuum tubes as the article laughingly asserts? Hell, India is considered one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world, have nuclear weapons and a space programme, but have barely 50% literacy [censusindia.net]. North Korea builds 8-lane highways that go virtually unused for future growth, don't think they don't have the resources and bright minds to throw at a military problem they think is pressing. I'm not saying the school is real, I really wouldn't know, but don't subscribe to the myth that everyone else in the world is using Lite-Brite instead of notebooks...
Real Purpose (Score:5, Insightful)
While it may be difficult to get into large systems here in the United States and do a lot of damage, it it much easier to install backdoors and logging programs.
One large threat to the North Korean government is its own people. Knowing what these people are reading and saying online is a great step in repressing rebellion.
Davak
Re:Or maybe it's true (Score:5, Insightful)
Who keeps all their spies in their own country anyway?
asymetrical warfare (Score:2, Insightful)
It is also far more difficult to wage war against the US, since North Korea's fleet wouldn't stand a chance against Aircraft carriers. So they would not be able to reach the American coast with enough forces to conquer the territory of the US. Considering the overwhelming force of the US military the only viable solution for the North Koreans in this asymetrical combat situation is to resort to tatics formerly only used by so called terrorists, like the Unabomber, the guy from Florida that sent the Antrax letters or the entity formerly supported by the CIA (during the 80's in Afghanistan) now known as Al Quaida, that managed a direct attack on the pentagon.
Modern civilisations have modern vurnerabilities. Our modern societies result in a lot of highly trained scientists that can research very much and very fast. Our infrasructure allows for a lot of production. This and other things allow for our overwhelming military might.
Even though it might be possible for rogue nations to infiltrate our societies with "undercover soldiers" or special forces ready to use our modern infrastructure against us in the event of war against their country I doubt if this to be possible on a large scale.
The nations that come into question here don't trust their citizen. The greatest strength modern societies have is loyalty and wealth (connected, no doubt about it). The dollar (combined with military might) proved to be the most potent weapon against resitence in Afghanistan and Iraq. In both countries the lower leaders were just bought out. The few that didn't accept the money were bombed. That showed the rest the way to go.
Anyways. Using hackers the rogue nations can attack and still control their soldiers, since they physically stay were they are. Let's wait and see what online pr0n does to them
Propaganda, by who? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? Perhaps I'm compleatly off base here, but when has the US used Nuclear weapons against defensless countries on a regular basis? We've used them twice, against a country we were at war with, over 50 years ago. I would hardly consider that 'regular' useage, and I would hardly consider WWII era Japan 'defenceless'.
And I'd be curious to know when we've used other weapons of mass distruction. Nerve agents in vietnam? I suppose you could argue that that exercise 30 years ago a deployment of WOMD... but it'd be a stretch. Regular? Hardly.
. . . the US is the only country . . . against defenseless countries.
So when all those third world nations used (and continue to use) WOMD against other nations and their own people, they somehow don't count?
Their president is an idiot and a warmonger.
Oh. Now I understand. Because you don't like the president, it's ok to make up things about America. Makes perfect sense.
There are lots of good, sound reasons to criticise Bush and America's forigen policy. Telling bold face lies is not one of them.
Even if it's true, how important is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's just the hobbyists. We aren't even addressing the ones who do it for money.
So why hasn't computing crashed and burned forever under the weight of all of these? It's because, in our sloppy suboptimal way, we have learned to respond. The procedures for identifying a new attack or vulnerability aren't great. But they are good enough. Our collective immune system responds.
If North Korea is training 100 l33t hax0rs a year it's a drop in the slop bucket of pros and amateurs already out there doing harm.
If the numbers aren't that impressive, then how about the kinds of attacks they can do? My suspicion is that it isn't nearly as bad as it seems at first glance. This is North Korea we are talking about. There aren't that many people who have grown up living and breathing OS source code. Of the few really skilled people they have many (most? all?) are probably needed in other capacities making them unavailable to write the next Big Worm.
And how good will they be? Creativity, the free play of ideas, and the ability to see things from a different perspective - all of which are important to being a really good code monkey let alone a world class security breaker - are capital crimes in North Korea. Praising the Great Leader and lock-step conformity don't cut it when you are trying to come up with the unexpected and the truly creative.
So even if it's not pure propaganda from Seoul I'm not all that worried.
Re:Or maybe it's true (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition, you underestimate the value of propaganda. Some of those guys are seriously brainwashed. Just because you can use a computer exceptionally well doesn't mean that you have a lick of common sense.
Re:that's true. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why that would be like asking the United States if there were WMD in Iraq.
Do you think Eritrea and Ethiopia joined the "coaltion of the willing" because they believed the US and felt a moral obligation to stop Saddam, or do you think maybe they just both wanted the US on their side in a border dispute, and couldn't give a shit whether the US was telling the truth about Iraq.
The point of all of this is when there is a dispute, its best to hear the account of imparital bystander than that of the people involved in the dispute.
Re:Well, c'mon... (Score:4, Insightful)
You've gotta love our fellow
No, I didn't mean to insult you, skyshadow (sorry if I did), but seriously, when was the last time we could trust what we hear from the media in general or the whitehouse in particular? Even South Korea now says that most likely the Noth is bluffing, and there is precisely zero conclusive intelligence results to substantiate the claim that they have any nukes. They are bluffing and trying to blackmail US and others into giving them energy (they really don't have much of a choice, BTW). It's that simple.
Also consider that according to intelligence, N Korea possibly has enough radioactive material for a bomb. No proof of the existence of the bomb itself though. No word of whether they have sufficient expertise to build one. If you consider that we have an 'undeniable' proof that Iraq has chemical, biological and possibly nuclear weapons, and we haven't found squat there yet, I wouldn't be very convinced that allegations about Korea are anywhere close to truth at all. After all, if we can't find evidence to back up the 'undeniable proof', what are the chances of finding evidence to support the 'possibility'?
And claiming that they were preparing hackers for 20 years... Give me a break! If 20 years ago we knew what computers would become now, chances are everyone would've given much thought to such things as security, Y2K problems, etc, and we wouldn't be seeing a few dozen new M$ holes a week. I doubt any country, including (and especially) N.Korea could've had that much foresight. US didn't see that; Europe didn't; N.Korea did. They must have a really good magic 8-ball or something!
It's very easy to declare someone you don't like a terrorist, an axis of evil, and blame them for all possible sins while attaching every negative label available. Especially when no proof of such allegations is necessary, or even expected. While I don't know much about N.Korea in particular (besides that they aren't the nicest guys on the block), I am very sceptical that any of the allegations made can stick to them. The only reason why these allegations aren't seen as totally bogus is that it's not in their best interests to refute them. They want to look scarier than they really are so they can blackmail others into giving them what they need (in this case energy, whether in petroleum from US or otherwise). And all that cyber-terrorism crap is nothing more than a FUD that is a result of someone's sick imagination.
Re:Why Not? (Score:2, Insightful)
Except not. Turns out that 20 years ago it was this cop who let loose this killer. But to make the matter worst, the cop also had a number of killing under his belt.
But to make it even more worst, the cop is a cop because he proclaim himself as one, but almost everybody sees him as another crook. One that this one has a very big gun and a very loud mouth
What an advisor the US have! (Score:2, Insightful)
"The following year, Pentagon adviser and Rand consultant John Arquilla concocted a fictional scenario, published in Wired magazine, of a global cyberwar engineered by -- whom else -- the North Koreans."
Later in the article:
"Arquilla said highly automated U.S. military processes, such as the "air tasking order" of an air campaign, or time-phased deployment of troops and equipment, could be disrupted by a North Korean cyberattack."
"In such cases, the disruption of American combat operations and logistics could make a very substantial difference in the overall military campaign," said Arquilla.
So I can infere from what mr. Arquilla said that the US armed forces coordinate their logistics and operations using the open structure from the Internet and it's usual tools...
I almost can see general Schwarzkopf using ICQ group messages to coordinate an attack... the friendly fire? someone looking at some p0rn webcam get so excited and fires a full blast
geez... how I would like to be a consultant... talking bullshit like this and getting attention... and if I really wanted to get media attention I would mention blinding comms sattelites and using EMP weapons in the war field... they would think "geez... this guy is Grand Moff Tarkin incarnated"
Pentagon : the skill is inside ;-) (Score:1, Insightful)
That is right they know much of what is propaganda
Did ya forget about the "mass destruction weapon" that was suppose to legitimate the Iraq invasion ?
-LOL
So they can cheat in games. (Score:3, Insightful)
Propaganda (Score:1, Insightful)
NoSuchGuy
More believeable than you think... (Score:3, Insightful)
In 1996, North Korea sent well-trained and well-armed infiltration agents into South Korea on an information-gathering mission and if it hadn't been for one sharp-eyed cabdriver, we might never have known that it had even happened.
With leadership resembling a Stalinist 'cult of personality' possessing total information control at its disposal, the North Korean government can create and has created effective personel resources in areas pertaining to espionage and infiltration. This well-documented fact makes the idea of North Korea's running a military 'cyberacademy' a lot more credible than the Iraq-obsessed U.S. Government which has a stake in playing down a North Korean threat would have you believe.
Two incidents show go far to prove this:
The first is the aforementioned infiltration of Nouth Korean reconnaisance troops by submarine.
After the infiltrator's accidental discovery, they were hunted down by south Korean Military and police units. After a series of bloody firefights, rather than face capture some of the infiltrators and submarine crew were shot to death by their own officers.
Here is a link to the story. http://www.koreascope.org/english/sub/2/nk10_7.ht
The second is the discovery after thirty years, that North Korea sent agents into Japan to kidnap individuals to serve as tutors in masquerading as Japanese nationals for the North Korean intelligence services. These people, among others, were flown to Japan for a brief reunion after decades of captivity during which their families had long since given them up for dead.
North Korea may have a very low GNP by western standards, but it is an industrialized nation and the ability of its government to divert resources from one segment of society to another certainly lends strong credence to the threat described in the article.