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Comment by ComodoHacker | Hacker News Reader

>speculation that North Korea might be behind the latest cyber attack

Does North have hackers skilled enough to perform such (or any) attacks? How did they acquire their skills given the internet is forbidden there?

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As much as the US Media wants to you think North Korea is cut off from the rest of the world, it's not. They have a space program and nuclear program, which is more than what a lot of other countries can say.

It's not a bunch of people living under thatch houses.

If the government wants to make strides in something, they will. They can send their students overseas and get their education there. They can collaborate with other countries.

It's not something every citizen can achieve, but you only need a subset to be effective in cyber warfare.

As much as the US Media wants to you think North Korea is cut off from the rest of the world, it's not.

The US media doesn't say that. The average N. Korean is very much cut off from the rest of the world....somewhat changing with smuggled in phone and DVDs, but still.

> The average N. Korean is very much cut off from the rest of the world.

We aren't talking about the average N. Korean. Their best and brightest are sent offshore to study in STEM fields (with their family held hostage against their eventual return of course).

I imagine that they can select the most promising students, enroll them in the military, and give them, under scrutiny, access to all the information they need.

Creating a layer of young intelligent people with access to information and exposure to foreign culture... This can be dangerous.

Dangerous for their family. I'm sure the young people have their entire family on the verge of hard labor camp, or death, if they do something against the government.

If the smart ones who work for the government wants can feed their entire family, why would they do something different? To strive for a democracy like ours where a racist, bigot and xenophobe like Trump is a vote away from being president?

All NK needs to do is air some of Trump's speeches to prove dear leader was right all along.

As other commenters have noted, they're not completely primitive. And while yes, their technical know-how is far behind South Korea's, with the state of modern cybersecurity its equivalently harder to keep people out than it is to get in.

For what it's worth, that problem works both ways; I'd imagine South Korea (and the CIA and whoever else is interested) has all sorts of access to North Korean systems.

I seem to recall that the Sony hack was attributed to North Korean hackers and while many people laughed it off, serious investigations pointed that it was really the case. (Just on top of my head, I'll let you dig for sources.)

serious analysis pointed to iran (malware shared traits with that used in saudi aramco hack a year or two prior), probably because nk and iran have some kind of offensive sharing arrangement on cyber, but the nuclear deal was in the works and the last thing the obama admin wanted to deal with was a perceived provocation.

The same way they got ahold of nuclear weapons knowledge.

Physics was never forbidden. And they got much from Soviets.

You dont need hacker culture for electronic warfare

If after decades, they are only now developing nukes barely as powerful as the earliest nuclear weapons (although still dangerous), one would wonder if their decades delayed IT know-how really can pull off such an attack.

The situation is a bit more complex than that. We don't know the yield of NK's weapons based on the tests, because it's likely the tests have been sized to minimize material usage and just confirm the physics. Given that they're expanding their uranium mining it seems likely they have centrifuges operating and they're building hybrid bombs. This is the same path China went down when they were material limited.

So anyhow, it's not like a footrace where the major nuclear powers are at the finish line and NK is trying to catch up. They're following their own path appropriate for the situation they're in.

Two things:

- I don't think the chronological order in which we've developed technologies matches up with the difficulties of cloning/repurposing/using them. I wouldn't expect NK to be able to put a man on the moon prior to, say, being able to make a Facebook clone.

- not everything is being invented from scratch. If individuals can smuggle data and devices in, do you doubt the military acting with the full resources of the country couldn't manage the same?

If they don't, there are skilled hackers elsewhere who would sell their services.

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