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Comment by finolex1 | Hacker News Reader

I share your skepticism as well, but I wouldn't be too dismissive of North Korean Cyber capabilities either. They do have a specialized cyber warfare unit, handpick and train their soldiers extremely intensively (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/02/north-kor...). Their performances in other international competitions, like the International Math Olympiad (https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=PRK), also indicates that they have the ability to do so if they wish to.

Developing cyberwarfare capabilities seems like a relatively low cost (compared to developing ballistic missiles at least), low risk investment, with a potentially large payoff, so I would be surprised if they didn't try to develop these skills.

Of course, all evidence tying N.Korea to this specific attack is circumstantial and almost impossible to definitively prove unless they admit it and show proof themselves.

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Regarding "Their performances in ... International Math Olympiad": they were disqualified many times. I was at IMO in Istanbul in 1993 and they were disqualified, becuase they cheated (their official translator provided them solutions to the problems and it was discovered). So it may be possible that these "performances" don't indicate any such ability...

For some context, it is relatively easy to cheat at the IMO if a team wants to do so. See for example this thread: https://www.quora.com/How-did-North-Korea-cheat-in-the-IMO-i...

It is my understanding that plenty of people do not believe North Korea cheated in 2010 (and also, plenty of people believe that other specific teams have cheated in specific years). Furthermore, it is my understanding that the North Korean team leader in recent years has not seen the problems before the contest (relying instead on the South Korean translation of the problems), thus removing the most obvious mechanism of cheating. Unfortunately, I do not know of a public source of this information and accordingly I have not verified it myself.

For that you need intellectuals, and the NK systems killed most of them, and is not tuned to produce new ones. It's very hard to destroy criticism and grow people who can think.

What make you think you need intellectuals to develop technical exploits?

Because it requires a brain. A drone can't do it.

Do you really think that technical proficiency requires "intellectualism" as it's normally understood? Because I sure don't. How many developers have you known who were extremely fascinated by the narrow details of a technical problem, and utterly uninterested in the wider application and impact of their work? I've worked with more than a few who fit that description.

Intellectual just mean people that use their intellect a lot. It's not limited to debating and philosophy. And mathematician is an intellectual.

And yes, somebody who has the skill to craft a very low level yet highly flexible malware requires skill that goes beyong copy/paste from stackoverflow.

To me 'intellectual' conjures an image of highfalutin college academics - that sort of rigor has not been linked to offensive security, historically. If a rag-tag group like Anon or curious but intelligent teenagers can exploit systems, so can a North Korean cyber-division. If you are suggesting that intelligence has been purged out of the North Korean gene pool, I have a bell-curve to show you.

What exactly does a math competition have to do with ransomware?

If you are skilled in math, you will be better/faster in programming anything - including ransomware...

This is an incredible oversimplification(at best) which does not hold as-is.

I know enough math people who are ABYSMAL at coding due to the differences between domains and the constraints that shaped their way of thinking, and a lot of linguists who are surprisingly good at it due to just that.

Italian major CS minor here: Not good at math (working on it) but good at programming (full time salaried job with good pay doesn't mean I'm good at it but it'd about the only credential I have) (also working on it).

I dismissed programming as a freshman because I was so bad at math in high school. Turns out my high school teachers were very bad teachers (shocking when they're paid so little, who would've thought? ) I learned Italian fluently, spent a few years overseas immersing myself in it, came home and had a rough time finding my passion. Took a gap year and messed about with some online coding classes (code academy) and realized I loved it. It felt like a new language that instead of being expressively emotional it was a way to express logic and rules. I like logic and rules.

So I completed the minor +4 higher level classes and taught myself mobile development. No regrets... Besides not going into it as a major maybe.

Most of the North Korean people are starving most of the time - where are they practicing programming on, blackboards? The economic situation is VERY similar to Cuba before US lifted the embargo. Has any one of you heard famous hacking group originated from Cuba?

It doesn't directly, but it indicates that the nation has an ability to create a pipeline to identify and train talented students for a high-performance intellectual pursuit if they wish to.

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