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N. Korea Took in $2B in Cyberattacks to Fund Weapons Program: U.N. Report
- Ididntdothis 7y agoFrom whatever I have read so far North Korea government is pretty much a criminal organization like the Mafia . They forge money, sell drugs, abduct people, sell weapons. Pretty much anything is fair game as long as it makes money without any regard for health or life of their own people or foreigners . In addition they have a propensity for killing each other. I think it would make a great mob movie.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- st1ck 7y agoTotally, no other government, especially those cyber superpower countries, would ever do such immoral things.
- cheeze 7y agoYeah. I can't imagine Russia ever doing something like Hacking an adversary or abducting someone.
- woodandsteel 7y agoRussia is terrible, but No. Korea is worse for it's size. That's because Russia has large legitimate sources of income, like fossil fuels, agriculture, and manufacturing. No. Korea has much less that other countries want to buy, so it makes most of its currency from criminal activity of one type or another.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoSure they all do that but I would argue that North Korea is on a different level.
- reilly3000 7y agoIndeed, a ‘beautiful vision for his country’.
- coldtea 7y agoSounds about as reliable a news as the WMDs of yore...
- tareqak 7y agoCould you please be a bit more specific about what you are trying to say?
- coldtea 7y agoThat there's all kind of propaganda around any enemy du jour, and don't believe everything that you hear, even if it comes from "expert groups" and "independent journalists". Let's see in a few years...
- anigbrowl 7y agoSounds considerably more reliable since it's not coming from a single state actor
- mrtweetyhack 7y agoYou mean crypto coins support terrorism? True that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dmix 7y agoConsidering the lack of blow back this has generated it seems to be a successful operation on NK's part. Who knows, maybe there will be some future consequences, but everyone globally is so focused on their nukes this seems to get lost on the side. Plus the intel agencies care more about offensive operations and hiding their capabilities, so they don't seem to be making much noise about all this to the public either (not that law enforcement is their job).
- tfha 7y agoIf I could prevent NK from getting Nukes, or I could prevent NK from stealing billions from banks... seems pretty reasonable that nukes are still the focus
- bronco21016 7y agoBut aren’t the billions a prerequisite for nukes? At the end of the day they’re still going to need money to make things happen with regards to the nukes. Unless they’re able to go from raw material to facilities and missiles purely from slave labor?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoGet your enemies to pay for your weapons. Neat trick, if you can pull it off. I'd be more impressed if they used the money to feed their people, though.
- mostlyjason 7y agoMaybe this is what Trump meant when he said Mexico would pay for the wall?
- astrodust 7y agoEl Chapo is picking up the tab, apparently.
- onetimemanytime 7y agoMilitary first is the rule. I wonder if they managed to get the stolen money, meaning cash it out. They might have stolen $2B but that money or coins might still be off limits to NK.
- cronix 7y agoThe article talks about laundering, which is cashing it out.
- alasdair_ 7y agoThe moment the NK people are well fed and able to focus on things other than survival is the moment that the regime will be overthrown.
- uncoder0 7y agoThe same goes for firearms. The moment they can defend themselves is the moment they take the food and resources for themselves. Having your population near starvation and defenseless is the main method used to maintain power as an oppressive fascist regime.
- SmileyRedBall 7y agoYet more cyber_BS ..
- michalxnet 7y agoI will guess even more. And add some drug money lets say about ~$1.3B Two years ago: The World Once Laughed at North Korean Cyberpower. No More. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/world/asia/north-korea-hacking-cyber-sony.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/15/world/asia/north-korea-ha...
- Scaevolus 7y agoThere's probably large-scale counterfeiting, too! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar#North_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar#North_Korea
- plazmatic 7y agoAnd we've had a "president" who's doing nothing about North Korea other than going for picture ops. Rough times for the U.S. without a true Commander-in-Chief. Hopefully things change next year. The 2020's could be grand if we have a real leader in the White House.
- rolltiide 7y ago> North Korea has generated an estimated $2 billion for its weapons of mass destruction programs using “widespread and increasingly sophisticated” cyberattacks to steal from banks and cryptocurrency exchanges I'm more interested in how this proves cryptocurrency markets are liquid enough. Enterprises of all sizes can get in and out of a portfolio of the largest cryptocurrencies.
- ju-st 7y agoHow is it possible to attribute cyberattacks to a state sponsored hacking programme?
- mises 7y agoVery. Honestly, they're often not that stealthy (especially N. Korea and Iran) because they have the mantle of an evil regime behind which they can hide. China and Russia barely moreso. Companies with whom I work have been ransomed by these actors, and the FBI has almost always said they know who did it and can do nothing. Policy set higher than them.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoMany ways. It’s hard to move $2B while being the target of several rival states intelligence gathering and not leave a trail that leads back to you.
- jdm2212 7y agoOften, our intel has hacked their intel and watched them do it. For example: the US is certain that North Korea was behind the Sony hack because South Korean intelligence hacked North Korean intelligence, and the NSA hacked South Korean intelligence. So the NSA found that it could access Sony servers by going through SK intel to NK intel to Sony. Another example: one of Cozy and Fancy Bear (don't remember which) is known definitely to be Russian because Dutch intelligence hacked the CCTV cameras outside their Moscow office and was able to correlate times when they conducted spearphishing operations with times when known Russian government hackers were in the office and specific, spearphishing-related Google searches were being issued from computers in the office.
- pfundstein 7y agoRussian hackers using Google instead of Yandex or other? Or is Google here a metaphor for 'searching the internet'?
- mises 7y agoThree-letters have known this for years. I know of countless situations in which a company gets ransomware and the FBI has relayed that the attacker is known, it's classified as terrorism, but nothing will happen. They've all seen it happen to many more companies. Basically, our government hasn't stood up to the evil communist bully that is little rocket man. He has committed horrible human rights violations, has attacked our companies (which is typically an act of war), and our government has done nothing.
- lawnchair_larry 7y agoThere is a difference between doing nothing and not telling mises from hackernews what they are doing.
- mikedilger 7y agoDoes anyone have a good explanation or thoughts on why a confidential UN report was leaked to the media?
- hannob 7y agoEven if you keep the circle small you have a bunch of people who will have access to the report. Include some people who can gain access if they want to, e.g. IT staff. It takes one of them who strongly believes that this information should be public knowledge.
- sharadov 7y agoHow are they training the hackers? Are they being educated abroad, or are they hiring foreign hackers? For a country living in the dark ages, how are they managing to pull this off?
- kyruzic 7y agoThey aren't living in the dark ages. You and American media are just making that up.
- ALittleLight 7y agohttps://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2014/02/25/08/v4-North-Korea-at-night.jpg?w968h681 https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...
- kyruzic 7y agoYoure own picture is proving yourself wrong. There is clearly lights in north Korea. Do you understand Korean geography? The majority of the peninsula is mountaineous jungle. Of course there is plenty of areas that don't have lights. I never said it was a futuristic paradise or comparable to south Korea. But saying it is living in the dark ages is just a flat out lie. They have lights, computers, televisions, radios and many other of the modern amenities of the first world. Yes they may all be pyeongyang but that does not mean the country is living in the dark ages.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- FDSGSG 7y ago> are they hiring foreign hackers? Probably, but they wouldn't need more than one or two. E: Actually, I should just refer to this awfully specific grugq take https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/997114164131737600 https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/997114164131737600
- 7y ago
- ourmandave 7y agoMaybe we'll never hear about it but it seems strange we don't have counter cyber ops against their weapons programs, e.g. Israel Stuxnet and Iran's nuclear program.
- somebodythere 7y agoTo think they don't is naive. The US has counter cyber ops against even their closest allies.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoThere's probably some guys in office buildings in Georgia and Maryland who are chucking in their heads as they read your comment.
- choppaface 7y agoNorth Korea has substantial hydroelectric power, which could support a highly profitable crypto mining operation. I wonder how much hydropower they need before the opportunity cost of hacking exceeds that of mining crypto. I don’t think anybody wants them to spend money on weapons, but in the eventuality that they never go to war, it would probably be desirable to prevent theft.
- FDSGSG 7y agoI don't see how the opportunity cost of hacking could ever exceed that of mining crypto.
- choppaface 7y agoCrypto mining would provide a more stable cashflow and has a more limited downside versus theft. I see your point, given how successful the thieves have been. But I just wonder about the value of hydro power.
- FDSGSG 7y agoHydro power is nice and all, but monetizing that requires strictly different resources than monetizing hackers. Perhaps hydro power can be valuable, but that will not make hacking any less valuable.
- dreamcompiler 7y agoThe beautiful part here is that the DPRK has (effectively) no cyber infrastructure of its own to retaliate against. It's perfect asymmetric warfare.
- bitcoinmoney 7y agoHow is nk connected to Internet?
- borumpilot 7y agoQuick google found: Since 2010: North Korean ISP Star JV via China Unicom link. Since 2017: TransTeleCom, or TTK, is one of Russia’s biggest telecommunications companies and a subsidiary of the Russian railway operator. https://www.38north.org/2017/10/mwilliams100117/ https://www.38north.org/2017/10/mwilliams100117/