5 ms·

True, but it's funny how all these hijinks seemed so cool in the books. Jacking in while in a grimy Tokyo nightclub as your friend, the assassin with razorblade

True, but it's funny how all these hijinks seemed so cool in the books. Jacking in while in a grimy Tokyo nightclub as your friend, the assassin with razorblades, watches your back. But in reality, it's just all so pathetic. Sometimes I feel like a cyberpunk fan in 1988 found a monkey's paw. Made a wish that it would all come true. And it did, but in a much more banal & sad way than the fan would have thought possible.

rchaud 4y ago
Replace the Tokyo nightclub with an air-conditioned military intelligence office in Pyongyang, where crypto is flooding in via ransomware payments and web3 exploits. That's the reality and it would still be quite sensational....as a Tom Clancy novel.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Do you have evidence that North Korea makes up any significant amount of "Web3" exploits? From my vantage point, it seems to be mostly bored twentysomethings.
  - danielvf 4y ago
    I don't think this one was North Korea. And yes, most aren't. North Korean cryptocurrency hacks are a bit distinctive. Rather than finding logical bugs in contracts, they tend to use traditional spearphishing / social eng to get targeted people to run malware which they try to pivot to stealing keys / access credentials. Then after a hack, most crypto hackers try to obfuscate and store their stole coins on chain somewhere. North Korea already has a large and practiced money laundering network, so after a hack the money immediately starts going to hundreds of different places in the real world, perhaps to mules or to faked accounts in Southeast Asia.
  - Nitramp 4y ago
    https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-187a https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-187a Google: "North Korea Ransomware"
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Where's the connection? Ransomware is the other side of the equation: using things like bitcoin to launder money. That's substantially different from exploiting cryptocurrencies.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  That could just as easily be a chapter in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
hilbertseries 4y ago
I remember how disappointing the duos attack on dyn was several years ago. Science fiction had finally come true, peoples fridges and toasters had been turned into weapons. Become part of a bot net and checks notes took down some websites for a couple hours.
AceJohnny2 4y ago
> And it did, but in a much more banal & sad way "The future is already here, just unevenly distributed" and boring
lostmsu 4y ago
Matches my view of cyberpunk as comic books of sci-fi.

rchaud 4y ago

Replace the Tokyo nightclub with an air-conditioned military intelligence office in Pyongyang, where crypto is flooding in via ransomware payments and web3 exploits. That's the reality and it would still be quite sensational....as a Tom Clancy novel.

woodruffw 4y ago
Do you have evidence that North Korea makes up any significant amount of "Web3" exploits? From my vantage point, it seems to be mostly bored twentysomethings.
- danielvf 4y ago
  I don't think this one was North Korea. And yes, most aren't. North Korean cryptocurrency hacks are a bit distinctive. Rather than finding logical bugs in contracts, they tend to use traditional spearphishing / social eng to get targeted people to run malware which they try to pivot to stealing keys / access credentials. Then after a hack, most crypto hackers try to obfuscate and store their stole coins on chain somewhere. North Korea already has a large and practiced money laundering network, so after a hack the money immediately starts going to hundreds of different places in the real world, perhaps to mules or to faked accounts in Southeast Asia.
- Nitramp 4y ago
  https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-187a https://www.cisa.gov/uscert/ncas/alerts/aa22-187a Google: "North Korea Ransomware"
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Where's the connection? Ransomware is the other side of the equation: using things like bitcoin to launder money. That's substantially different from exploiting cryptocurrencies.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
That could just as easily be a chapter in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.

hilbertseries 4y ago

I remember how disappointing the duos attack on dyn was several years ago. Science fiction had finally come true, peoples fridges and toasters had been turned into weapons. Become part of a bot net and checks notes took down some websites for a couple hours.

AceJohnny2 4y ago

> And it did, but in a much more banal & sad way "The future is already here, just unevenly distributed" and boring

lostmsu 4y ago

Matches my view of cyberpunk as comic books of sci-fi.