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Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses
- oneofthose 12y agoThis article reads like an excerpt from a Vernor Vinge novel, in particular `Rainbows End`. Amazing.
- Alupis 12y agoThis is occurring after the hacker group who claimed the attack (Guardians of Peace), sent the FBI a letter thanking them for blaming North Korea, calling the FBI the best (sic), and linked to a youtube video that called the FBI "an idiot".[1] [1] http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/world/asia/north-korea-us-sony-hack-who-says-what/index.html?hpt=hp_c2 http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/world/asia/north-korea-us-sony...
- spacefight 12y agoThat video is ages old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiRacdl02w4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiRacdl02w4
- Alupis 12y agothe upload wasn't by them obviously, but they linked to it as a sort of message.
- pera 12y agouhm I think that's a very old (2004?) flash from 2ch
- hotgoldminer 12y agoResisting temptation to rickroll HNers...
- andreyf 12y agoIs this [1] the original message? How does anyone know this was actually uploaded by the Sony hackers? 1. https://www.quickleak.org/HFgbYdfG https://www.quickleak.org/HFgbYdfG
- spdustin 12y agoDid anyone else hear "America, fuck yeah!" after the last paragraph of that CNN article? "Yes, let's go out and get all the republicans (the unintentional irony of the GOP supporting the movie notwithstanding) to buy tickets to see this movie to show those foreigners that when terrorists try to scare us, we just buy a bunch of useless shit." Perhaps one of the dumbest things I've heard in response to this situation yet. Sorry - I know I'm fairly new as a commenter (long time listener, nearly-first time caller!), and my karma may take a nosedive for this one. I just couldn't hold this one inside.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- hardwaresofton 12y agoNo offense (to any who might be vehement supporters of NK I guess, though I can't imagine there are many), but I can't imagine the NK internet is/was very big/strong/fault-tolerant.
- downandout 12y agoI suspect this to be the work of the US government, but out of curiosity I wonder if there would be any legal consequences were Sony or another private party to launch a DDOS attack on North Korea from the US. Obviously no one would be extradited to NK, but I'm curious if that would run afoul of US law. If not, it might be fun to create some software or a mobile app that would keep this going indefinitely. I imagine a "CrashNK" app would get alot of downloads.
- Alupis 12y ago> I suspect this to be the work of the US government If true, the backlash could be significant. There's already large portions of the world trying to de-centralize the internet from the US (routing around, etc) after the Snowden leaks and discoveries of egregious abuses of power over the internet by the US government. No single country should have the capability (or right) to knock an entire other country off the internet, North Korea or not...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- free2rhyme214 12y agoI think you don't understand how powerful the US military really is. We take down governments in our sleep and replace them with our own puppets.
- cubano 12y agoWe take down governments in our sleep and replace them with our own puppets. Except for the fact that the Chinese protect that particular government, and that makes thing a lot stickier.
- knd775 12y agoChina is publicly backing away from North Korea. They have said that they will not come to NK's aid if they do something stupid and get attacked.
- sauere 12y ago/edit: posting in wrong thread. sorry. (and stop it with the downvotes!)
- sp332 12y agoWrong article?
- josefresco 12y agoYes, this looks to be his intended thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8784335 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8784335
- luftderfreiheit 12y agoWhat fascinating times we live in. My interpretation of the general history of warfare is that countries agree on restraint once some situation has occurred that all sides agree should never happen again. Mustard gas in WWI, nuclear weapons in WWII... Hopefully this doesn't spiral out of control. It's not clear where the boundaries are that we don't want to cross.
- ForHackernews 12y agoI'd be pretty happy if governments all decided "cyberwarfare" was an acceptable substitute for the real thing. Nobody dies, some money is lost, some important people are embarrassed.
- cubano 12y agosome important people are embarrassed. Which is pretty much exactly why it won't happen.
- towelguy 12y agoHow would they decide who wins?
- slayed0 12y agoThe smae way they decide in a normal war. They keep going until a treaty is signed. Typically the side who is worse off "throws in the towel" so to speak by signing a treaty that holds the favor of the stronger side.
- abvdasker 12y ago> Nobody dies, some money is lost, some important people are embarrassed If there's one thing the Sony breach and other major hacks over the last few years have illustrated, it's that there is no clear limit to the damage that can be done from something like this. EDIT: To me, what's so frightening about this is the lack of historical precedent for conflicts between nations in the form of cyberwarfare. We don't know what could happen. We don't know if the damage will be limited to financial cost and embarrassment, and we don't know that a scuffle between nations on the Internet will remain contained as such.
- eyeareque 12y agoThe public /22 (1024 IPs) that is used by North Korea is widely known now, so it is bad form to assume the US is behind this attack. Heck, a 14 year old with a few bots could take down their whole country. This outage won't hurt North Korea. At best it makes for a good head line to see the whole country offline. At worst this means that their elite citizens cannot access social networks or email outside of their country. I really hope this isn't the doing's of the US government. You'd hope they could do better than this..
- unreal37 12y agoMost likely it's some 14 year old with a small bot network. Or they decided to unplug their router for a week or two to have a bit of a Christmas break from the hassle of maintaining it, since it doesn't harm them in any way.
- dev1n 12y agoIn support of the idea that it was in fact a 14 year old and not a nation this [1] was posted a few days ago on HN. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8777226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8777226 edit: I do not mean that what the person who created that website is a 14 year old as it is a very thorough analysis. Just that with this type of information on the internet it is probably pretty easy to construct a bunch of bots to take out the country's connections to the outside world.
- raimondious 12y agoAlso, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8777811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8777811
- sd8f9iu 12y agoI hope so too, and I doubt the US government's response will be cyber-warfare related. There's not much they can do in the first place, and it would be a petty tit-for-tat reprimand.
- digikata 12y ago
- jmnicolas 12y agoOf course, NK won't be pissed at all and they're not going to retaliate at all (yeah I know it's probably the goal of this attack). This might be the first steps of the first cyber world war for all I know. The only good thing is that only the elite will be affected by the collapse of NK Internet (no porn for a while). The average citizen probably can't even grasp what the net is, and none of her life is linked to it.
- unreal37 12y agoWilling to bet they have their porn safely saved on their external hard drives. No internet required for that.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jusben1369 12y agoYes can it really be the first cyber war if one side doesn't really have a cyber presence?
- Monotoko 12y agoThe elite do, I imagine this will affect them in a big way. For all we know a few addresses on the public space could also be acting as routes for the private intranet - I imagine they're not completely seperated.
- jmnicolas 12y agoThey don't need a massive cyber presence to damage others cyber presence. And for them it's more a matter of pride than real damage done to their country. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced that they will start to make some new missile test soon.
- gldalmaso 12y agoFrom my understanding of NK, if they retaliate, my bet is that it will be in the realm of physical and not cyber at all. Possibly blowing up the first american person/property they can reach. Maybe the whole point is to instigate an escalation from "alleged vandalism" to "verifiable act of war".
- ilamont 12y agoIf this is the work of the U.S., it sets a very bad precedent.
- avidwriter 12y agoit's the future. might as well get used to it now.
- jmnicolas 12y agoI don't think it is : why provoke a country that has nothing to loose in a cyber war when mostly everything in the US is dependent on the Internet ? Look at what happened to Sony (even if NK may had nothing to do with it) and imagine what would happen if NK decided to shut down several US companies 'Sony style'. The financial damage would be tremendous for the economy. IMO cyber war is a bit like nuclear war : the goal is not to use it, or life can become really complicated really fast.
- SEJeff 12y agoDo people seriously think the USG is behind a ddos when Anonymous has already stated they are going to go after the DRPK? http://www.inquisitr.com/1691688/anonymous-announces-vengeance-on-north-korea-for-sony-hack-with-opripnk/ http://www.inquisitr.com/1691688/anonymous-announces-vengean...
- tedunangst 12y agoMaybe the USG is Anonymous!
- happyscrappy 12y agoNah, it's a double false flag by the hacker 4chan.
- classicsnoot 12y agoI disagree; this bears the markings of... THE COUNTESS.
- autokad 12y agohe's down voted but not too far off base. The US has already used hacker organizations to inadvertently act in the interests of the US government. Considering that the US almost certainly has moles in Anonymous, it wouldn't be hard to influence them to target Korea
- patronagezero 12y agoYou're over-complicating the issue, I think. Why not just do it themselves, then claim it was 'Anonymous'? No convincing required and no one to argue with. The whole thing smells like just another move to convince the non-believers into thinking NK was responsible for the Sony hack.
- autokad 12y agoi agree, I'm just saying that its possible.
- r109 12y agoooh thought this would happen. driverdan called it, reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8777811 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8777811
- driverdan 12y agoI really hope no one took my question as a prompt to attack them. That wasn't my intention. I was, and am, genuinely curious about their capacity.
- yourad_io 12y agoTrying to inform oneself about a technical matter through a mainstream news source is an exercise in frustration. Maybe my English needs work. Could someone with superior English skills to mine, please decipher the article and tell me: Is there any actual evidence of an attack? Has traffic spiked through/from NK? Or could this be them "pulling the plug"? Because the first case is: "Someone attacked NK Internet and brought it down", while the second "NK Internet IPs were \"withdrawn\" from the net".
- BorisMelnik 12y agoas far as I can tell (from one read of the post) the internet is down. I did not see any sort of quote from a network security analyst from a neutral party analyzing packets or saying it was a DDoS. It is not the style of DPNK for them to pull the plug, that would make them appear weak to the outside world when in fact they did invent the internet and have superior everything on everything.
- yourad_io 12y ago> It is not the style of DPNK for them to pull the plug, that would make them appear weak to the outside world when in fact they did invent the internet and have superior everything on everything. You misunderstand. They broke backwards compatibility with our puny Internet v1. It's progress, baby ;)
- oasisbob 12y agoDyn Research (née Renesys) was quoted in the article, and typically posts in-depth articles when this type of thing happens. [1] Based on the quote[2], I interpret the failure as someone attacking the routers themselves, overwhelming their control planes to the point where they can't sustain BGP sessions reliably. [1] No post from them yet, would expect it to be at http://research.dyn.com/2014/12/ http://research.dyn.com/2014/12/ if/when they do the full write-up. [2] "Their networks are under duress,” Mr. Madory said. “This is consistent with a DDoS attack on their routers,” he said, referring to a distributed denial of service attack, in which attackers flood a network with traffic until it collapses under the load."
- lostgame 12y agoOkay, seriously - who else is making the weird, kinda unsettling connection between the recent seizure of the Pirate Bay and this whole 'The Interview' business with North Korea? If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already? Is the seizure of The Pirate Bay linked to the intentional suppression of the release of this film? Why would the government raiding TPB concede to do this for terrorists? I mean, I hate to be one of those conspiracy nuts, but - it really seems like this is all a big distraction for the start of some new strange form of cyberterrorism.
- Dublum 12y agoExcept TPB doesn't actually host the leak, all they do is index the .torrent files, so if it's going to leak, it'll leak, and another tracker will have a link to it. The takedown and the DDoS came pretty close to each other, but it's important to remember that TPB gets taken down every year or two, it's just the cost of doing business with them. I don't see compelling evidence for correlation
- dopamean 12y agoYou don't need TPB to distribute something via bittorrent.
- TrainedMonkey 12y ago"If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already?" No, the Pirate Bay is largest and most visible torrent sharing site, but by no means the only one. If anyone wanted to leak Interview there are plenty of options.
- fleitz 12y agoPublic BT is the last stop for movies. They appear on IRC/Usenet before BT. Also, TPB is far from the only torrent indexing site.
- Alupis 12y agoWhile I do agree the timing is bizarre (after all, TPB was in Sweden for 6+ years and how many US takedown/seizure requests were ignored by the Sweden officials, but suddenly now they act?), I don't think it's necessarily related. It sure does make for a good conspiracy however.
- Monotoko 12y agoRecently a scan of the IP space was put on /r/netsec - I don't think this is coincidence.
- yuashizuki 12y agoLOL what a phatetic response, after a attack on the first amendment.
- crazypyro 12y agoThere's nothing proving it was an attack sponsored by the United States gov't or even a response.
- yuashizuki 12y agoPeople are writing about it, trying to lift moral. LOL
- darkstar999 12y agoWait.. who attacked the first amendment?
- ossreality 12y agoLOL as if North Korea is even expected to follow our Constitution.
- wahsd 12y agoSo, has it been 100% confirmed that NK is behind all of this? I don't know, I realize that NK is like some hormone crazed pubescent boy, but shit just seems weird. What if this all turns out to be some trolling by some third party, maybe even not government affiliated.
- McGlockenshire 12y ago> So, has it been 100% confirmed that NK is behind all of this? There is no actual released evidence, only statements from government agencies. The information that has been released says that some of the attacks did originate from servers hosted by NK IP space. That's it. NK itself says that they didn't do it, and that doesn't match their previous threatening behavior.
- nether 12y agoAl Qaeda also initially denied responsibility for 9/11. It doesn't really mean anything.
- jqm 12y agoGood point. And to the same point, neither do accusations anymore.... I think there is a lot going on and we don't know anything about it. I'm not sure if this for national security reasons or because we would be outraged beyond belief....
- unclebucknasty 12y ago>I think there is a lot going on and we don't know anything about it. You said it. You know, NK claims that the movie was USG propaganda. And, to the average American ear, that notion probably sounds completely nuts on its face. But, then, there's this that we learned just a couple of weeks ago: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/11/why-usaid-got-into-bed-with-cuban-rappers/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/11/why-usaid-got-into-bed-w... Not only do we not know everything that goes on, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to separate ridiculousness from truth.
- uean 12y agoWith such a small subnet, the idea that all the various sysadmins who read this article are immediately going to run a quick ping check to confirm NK is still down, and that in itself turning into sufficient traffic to DDoS the entire country, makes me giggle a bit.
- vlunkr 12y agoIs it weird to anyone else that all this "cyber warfare" is happening over the release of a movie. A comedy movie, not a documentary or propaganda film. I don't know if media has every had such an inadvertent impact on politics before. I would say it's a strange age we live in, but I think this strangeness is all from North Korea.
- sroerick 12y agoViral marketing for "Black Hat"
- jusben1369 12y agoWell to be clear to the North Koreans this is 100% a propaganda movie.
- Crito 12y agoThere seems that people living under regimes with limited freedom often fail to comprehend that people living in other countries might produce something without the explicit approval of their government. To the North Koreans, it is beyond comprehension that people living in the US made something, rather than the US government making it. To them, if Americans made it, that means America made it. This misunderstanding isn't limited to works coming out of the US of course. Another example of this failure to comprehend freedom of expression is the aftermath of the Muhammad cartoons published by some Danish newspapers. Enraged extremists around the world began rioting in front of Danish Embassies, as though the cartoons were drawn, commissioned, or even approved by the Danish government. See also: The souring of Chinese-Norwegian relations after the Norwegian Nobel Committee (which is a private organization which awards a private prize, despite having some members selected by Norwegian parliament) awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.
- d55 12y agoI have seen this line of thought some times now but I can't help but having a hard time believing it to be true. The notion that in other countries people have the right to express themselves freely is not particularly hard to grasp and pass on, even if told otherwise by state media (which are probably not very well respected under oppressive regimes.)
- curiously 12y agoThis is as useful as announcing we put an embargo on rolls royce pinnacle travel. There's only 15 of it and not many people can afford it anyways.
- Houshalter 12y agoWhich is better, it's the people in power they want to affect.
- jgwest 12y agoMaybe it's the doing of the U.S. gov't... maybe not... But in any case, what's the point of keeping the U.S. government's action or non-action secret? As the linked piece states: "If the attack was American in origin — something the United States would probably never acknowledge ..." It's sort of like the Doomsday Machine in Dr. Strangelove: it just doesn't work as a deterrent if you keep it a secret. Or is all this secret "cyberwarfare" capability that the U.S. government is secretly building only going to be used in secret?
- vegabook 12y agoYour excellent point has a follow on: who exactly is responsible for deciding when or if such a retaliation is to occur? Is there any oversight? Is there any accountability? Who are the individuals involved? Which agency is involved? Is Obama fessing up or not? I am not saying that I agree or disagree with the retaliation, only that open accountability is necessary, precisely such that our collective liberty is safeguarded. If this is not the US, then the cybersecurity apparatus of the US and other nations must surely provide more information about which entity has the power to take down an entire country's internet (even if, admittely, this is a small country that is easy to take down?). We need to know either that this is an explicit retaliatory attack (in which case, who is deciding the legitimacy and proportion of this retaliation), or if not, we need to know very clearly that our cybersecurity apparatus is aware of who did it, and if not, what are they doing to become aware of such issues in the future (with guarantees of public disclosure when this is not incompatible with national security). Basically, we cannot have a situation where signficant swathes of the internet can be taken down with nobody knowing what's going on, and what the principles are behind any decisions made. That would be a basic affront to freedom. Nebulous, intangible entities with the power to perpetrate or retaliate with no accountability, are extremely dangerous. I see a significant dearth of information here, information that is in the public interest whoever is behind it.
- graycat 12y agoSupposedly CloudFlare has ways to trace and then block a DDoS attack. So, maybe they know the origin of the NK DDoS attack if it was a DDoS.
- keeran 12y agoThis all stinks (TBP included) of a media blitz to prepare the greater masses for further restrictions to their Internet abilities. "Sure a content filter makes sense, there's a war going on."
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- seanemmer 12y agoMore informative article from Huffington Post: http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6367654 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6367654
- Rapzid 12y agoObama already calibrated the governments stance on this ordeal when he said the Sony hack was vandalism and NOT terrorism. I don't believe the government being responsible for NK's internet problems is in line with that. He also seemed to believe that the fault for any censorship as a result of the hack lies squarely within the US.
- zaroth 12y agoIMO it lies squarely with the FBI who wouldn't say it was not a credible threat. If you come to the FBI with a threat, and they say that it's credible, what are you going to do next?
- Rapzid 12y agoAfter the government told me something about a security threat? The same government that puts us on these orange and yellow and red alerts and nothing ever happens? And if something does happen there is no alert, or there are too many security advisories they don't know which ones are credible and then the whole incident gets politicised, turned into a blame game, and broken down into sound bites for Rush and ammo for polarized netizens to spew at each other turning every comment section on every current event article, ever, into a partisan war? Yeah, I'm not sure. But I can tell you I don't know a person alive or an institution operating today for which I could tell you how I would react to information they gave me without being fully seeped in the context in which it was given. Also, I don't know anything about what the FBI did or didn't say. I just know what was released(yeah :|) on what Obama said, which was that he would have liked for Sony or the Movie chains to have reached out. Ultimately, I think it's a societal issue. Our culture has become terrorized since 9/11. We are a bunch of wet blankets. It's a huge problem that we have no spine outside the military/intelligence community. We just get led around by the nose.
- kolev 12y agoHow immature... if it was the US. So, North Korea (we still don't know for sure) caused hundreds of millions of dollars of loss to Sony Pictures and US caused how much damage to North Korea (which doesn't care much about the internet)?... Well, close to $0. How proportional is that?!
- ElectricMonk79 12y agoCutting off a major source of communication to a paranoid and armed nation seems like a really bad idea. Ask any horror film director - imagined enemies and actions are much worse than being able to see the monster.
- classicsnoot 12y agoCould this bay some sort of shot across russia's bow?
- graycat 12y agoWell, NK likely does not have the best electric grid. So, maybe the problem was just their electric grid! Or maybe the problem was someone clicking on the wrong icon or push button in some system management software, maybe written in NK? But if the outage was from a DDoS from the USG, then I have to regard it as mostly a publicity stunt: That is, I have to believe that the NSA and CIA have much better control over, penetration of, NK computing than just a DDoS! I mean, NK has, what, bootleg, never updated copies of Win 95, Win 2K, Win XP SP0, really old IE with lots of ActiveX pages, really old FF and Flash? The place has to be a computer version of a fire trap without a firewall! NSA and CIA rootkits have to be tripping over each other all over NK like rats in a garbage pile. Oh, did someone compare NK with a garbage pile? Oh, how pejorative! I mean, how could one regard that pinnacle of fashion that gave the world the unique haircut of the Great Patriotic Leader, Jr.? Besides, their girls nearly all look so young, that is, small and thin, possibly because nearly everyone there is thin. Maybe they get a lot of exercise, aren't very warm in the winters, and don't eat very much, or all of those.
- nnnnnnn 12y agoNorth Korea uses Red Star OS[1], an operating system running on the Linux kernel and KDE 3, developed at the Korea Computer Center. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Star_OS
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- leke 12y agoSometimes I think the US's responses are so disproportionate, if someone was to actually attack their country, they would respond by attacking the entire world.