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."
Well, c'mon... (Score:5, Interesting)
While that's true, they've also managed to turn out atomic weapons, which is quite a bit more complicated than training someone to use nmap. So, really, a lack of a reliable national power grid and insufficiant will to feed the masses does not necessarily exclude the possibility that they're training script kiddies....
Uses (Score:4, Interesting)
Trust noone (Score:3, Interesting)
Military vs. Civilian (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a very interesting documentary special on Cinemax last month about a visit to North Korea. Sounds like quite a surreal place.
why would the infra in Korea bother a hacker ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pentagon not always right (Score:5, Interesting)
They've shown a high-level of professionalism when it comes in infiltrating the South and they did pull off the siezure of the USS Pueblo.
Sure the country's electrical grid is dodgy, but so was Israel and Jordan's until the late 80s. The DPRK military doesn't usually have the same electricity or food supply problems that the rest of the country has.
I'd not listen to everything the RoK says, but don't discount them as far as the Pentagon might*. The RoK is heavily infiltrated by the DPRK and I'm sure thier "cyberwar" planning would have agents in the South kick it off from that broadband rich area.
"The KPA (Korean People's Army) is still predominantly an analog and vacuum-tube force," said Alexandre Mansourov, a professor at the Pentagon's Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. "We tend to overestimate the level of information-technology expertise in the North Korean military, and South Korea is especially guilty of this."
That might be true for the majority of thier systems, but the DPRK has been buying modern SAMs ECM, Navigation and other systems from the FSR and China. Some of the more elite units in thier vast special forces have at least Gen 2-3 Night Vision and GPS recievers.
* - I've not read either link yet.
Re:Well, c'mon... (Score:5, Interesting)
Except for the fact that -- unlike Iraq,which did it's best to prove that it didn't have any -- North Korea admits to having them. This is also confirmed (to some extent) by US intelligence.
Consider also: The US is pussey-footing around N. Korea.
Do as I say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems to me this is very similar to the nuclear situation with north korea. At the same time the pentagon is pressing for new research [nytimes.com] in nuclear weopons they're pressing Iran and North Korea to cease they efforts.
Re:Why Not? (Score:5, Interesting)
They're trying to make nuclear weapons, and they have the resources necessary to do so, but they haven't yet demonstrated any success.
Re:Training (Score:5, Interesting)
The goal of such hackers isn't to create kewl programs, but to find clever tricks that waste the resources of others; so working at the fundamental machine level might give you an in. Sometimes having obstacles to overcome helps you acheive your goal. My experience is that people who learned to code on slower machines write tighter, more efficient code.
Of course, most of the security holes the hackers discover have probably been patched, but the fact that you have older equipment doesn't necessarily mean your training is worse.
Re:Why Not? (Score:5, Interesting)
When do we start?
Sudan - watch out! Burundi - take that! Zimbabwe - you're next!
Re:Military vs. Civilian (Score:5, Interesting)
This article [csmonitor.com] tells the story of a defector who had served in the North Korean army. Their barracks didn't have electricity, so they tapped into a nearby electrified railway. They got eggs on only holidays and meat only on Kim's birthday.
All that, of course, is a huge step above what the rest of the people have to endure. In this article [ucla.edu] a prison camp survivor talks about picking the corn out of cow dung.
North Korea - a picture is worth a thousand words (Score:5, Interesting)
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I think this picture [nasa.gov] says more about North Korea than any article ever could. It's a Nasa compsite image of the Earth At Night. It shows man-made light levels. It beautifully visualizes a combination of population density and "development".
For anyone weak in geography, look at the top and all the way to the right. The bright snake shape is Japan. Go to the bottom-left of the snake and look up-left a smidgen. That bright squarish area is South Korea. It looks like South Korea is an island floating in the sea, but it isn't. North Korea is directly above South Korea. North Korea is a big black hole. If you look carefully you can see a single white dot directly above the top left corner of South Korea. That dot is the capital of North Korea.
That black hole of a country has the world's THIRD LARGEST ARMY and they want to build NUKES. They are diverting their entire economy (what little there is of it) to supporting that army and building weapons. The North Korean government is incredibly isolationist and paranoid. They claim various international organizations are "conspiring" against them. They make no secret of the fact that they want/plan to "liberate" South Korea.
North Korea is like some homeless guy who doesn't have any shoes or food because he spends all his money hoarding knives and bullets. His brother happily lives in a nice house with his wife and kids, and this guy wants to invade that house on a "liberation mission". To top it off, this guy actually has a nuclear reactor to build a nukes with.
Anyway, another facinating thing to look for on the map is the Nile River. It on the top right of Africa. It's a very thin bright line with a kink in it. Each bank of the river is densely populated and well developed, but beyond that it is pitch black and empty.
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Re:Why Not? (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks for weighing in on that. I was waiting for a patriot to clear that up for me.
Quothagain: 1) Its government appeared to be trying to build weapons which it could use against us, and would surely have used them against us if it could.
I don't know about you, but somewhere around the 10th grade I learned about the difference between appearance and reality. If you lack recourse to the comedies of William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night, etc.), might I suggest you engage any willing transsexual in some "research." Point here is, people who commit action based on appearance rather than reality often end up feeling burned.
I won't even address point #2 Its government was surely sponsoring terrorism , as it's "surely" a repetition of your seeming/being mistake in #1.
As for #3: Its government was murdering its citizens to stay in power, why not check out the history of US action in Central and South America in the 20th century? I'd think your expression of sympathy for the dusky sons of Iraq should surely extend to the impoverished folk south of our great Country's borders. See Eduardo Galeano's 3-volume history Memory of Fire [amazon.com] for details, but US governments throughout the years have demonstrated no compunction for murdering those who would challenge their power.
It might be that all government is murder. But where would that leave us?
It matters that GWB lied about it (Score:5, Interesting)
Because GWB and his hawks claimed that they knew Iraq had WMD, and led their nation to war on that ground. It seems clear that was a lie.
This wasn't any little white lie either, tens of thousands of people were killed as a result of it.
Re:Uses (Score:1, Interesting)
Show me a country that does have a problem with that. Especailly a non-democratic country. But even in a democratic one. Consider our military budget versus, say, education or wellfare budget. The ratio is kinda skewed, isn't it? Notice I said 'our' - that's because a similar ratio can be observed in any country you are reading slashdot from (some are notorious for over-bloated 'defence' budgets, but all are guilty to some extent).
And while your country can afford the bloat without starving the people, N.Korea can't. So they opt to starving them. Very sad, very inhumane, yet not terribly different from the country you or I come from.
Re:You don't understand...look at the evidence! (Score:2, Interesting)
Read this explanation from the South Korean NIS:
http://www.koreascope.org/newdocs/etext/sub
- Ideological Surveillance, and the Classification of the People
In order to facilitate its dictatorial system, the North Korean Workers' Party conducted full-scale ideological investigations on every individual citizen in North Korea twice under the name of the so-called "intensive guidance project" (1958-1960) and the "citizens re-registration project" (1966-1967). Based on the results of these investigations, the North Korean ruling hierarchy in February 1971 completed the work of classifying the entire populace into 3 main groups, and then again into 51 sub-groups.
The classification is as follows:
The Classification
Main Groups
Sub-Groups
Treatment
The Core Group
(28%)
(12 sub-groups) Party cadre official,bereaved familiesof partisans, war heroes and their family members, etc.
0 Qualification for becoming cadres in the Party,Gov't and the military.
0 Better treatment in receiving the ration of food and daily necessities
The Instable Group
(45%)
(18 sub-groups) General populace
0 Qualification for becoming low-ranking Officials
0 A chance to be reclassified into the core group
The Hostile Group
(27%)
(21 sub-groups) Former religious believers, landlords and government officials during Japanese colonial rule, families of those who defectedto the Republic of Korea, ideological criminals and their family members.
0 Forced labor in remote places
0 No qualification for becoming Party members
0 No chance to enter colleges
0 A chance for only children to bereclassified into the instable group
0 Being placed under constant watch
Re:Well, c'mon... (Score:4, Interesting)
North Korea fired a test missile that landed in Alaska. [hankooki.com] How did Iraq's alleged WMDs become our top priority?
Simple, Iraq is in a hotspot (Oil, proximity to Saudis and Israelis), and N. Korea would remind the public of the horrors of Vietnam. Which invading president would you vote for?
IP connectivity (Score:3, Interesting)