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There is no way in the world that North Korea developed the expertise to affect this kind of attack in-house, even if it is a relatively simple piece of malware
by kcorbitt 14y ago
There is no way in the world that North Korea developed the expertise to affect this kind of attack in-house, even if it is a relatively simple piece of malware.
My guess is that the Chinese have been supporting them in a limited way. China doesn't really have a motivation to encourage North Korea's ridiculous antics and belligerent behavior of late, but it does have a great deal of interest in testing out its own cyber-attack vectors on real-world targets. If they were to directly attack the computers of another nation themselves the world will go into an uproar and their trade will suffer. On the other hand, if North Korea does it we've gotten to the point, collectively, where we don't do much more than roll our eyes and shrug it off. It's a bit like when the Gemans decided to test tank warfare by getting involved in the Spanish Civil War.
- duked 14y agoHonestly it doesn't require the help of China or any other country to build such a simple malware. It's not because the country has limited internet access that they are completely clueless. If it's intended, organized by the DPRK government I assume they must have a team of "cyber specialists". I personally doubt that needed china's help for such a simple malware. For info: http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/south-korean-banks-and-broadcasting-organizations-suffer-major-damage-cyber-attack http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/south-korean-banks-and... http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/remote-linux-wiper-found-south-korean-cyber-attack http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/remote-linux-wiper-fou...
- fixxer 14y agoI think Anonymous needs to get into this full. I don't see boots on the ground happening (thank god, because it'll be lose-lose).
- Spooky23 14y agoThe DPRK does some IT Offshoring stuff, particularly for Europeans. There was an article about it last summer in the Communications of the ACM.
- EliRivers 14y agoUnless they, you know, have internet access, some hardware to play around with and the ability to read.
- nwh 14y agoFor the most part they don't though.
- EliRivers 14y agoSo this is unlikely to be the work of some punk kid in a village two hundred miles from Pyongyang. I suppose there is the one in a million chance that the DPRK government might have arranged some kind of group that does have internet access and a mandate to cause problems for the country they're at war with.
- zokier 14y agoYou don't need most parts. You need a handful of people.
- jmsduran 14y agoIt is more likely that an elite group in Pyongyang has internet and computer access, with a subset of that group given more privileges to engineer & deploy malware/etc. Given that though, I find it rather hard to believe the North Korean government could pull off a cyber-attack like this all by themselves, especially when you take into account the effect of international sanctions and the North's very outdated technology (I remember reading they still use a 1960's crank-phone for communication through the DMZ). My best bet is that the Chinese government gave them significant assistance in launching this attack.
- socillion 14y agoThere has been some reporting on state-funded North Korean hackers, e.g. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/us-korea-north-hackers-idUSTRE7501U420110601 http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/01/us-korea-north-hac... No clue how much truth is behind it, I just remember reading about it a while back.