North Korea's 6000-man army of hackers come into their own | Hacker News Reader

North Korea's 6000-man army of hackers come into their own

nytimes.com

108 pointsmalloryerik64 comments

All the cyber- words from the article

cyber, cyberactivities, cyberattack, cyberattacks, cyberbattle, cyberconflict, cyberheists, cybermission, cyberoperations, cyberpolicy, cyberpotential, cyberpower, cyberprogram, cyberprograms, cyberretaliation, cybersecurity, cyberstrikes, cyberstudies, cyberthreat, cyberwar, cyberwarfare, cyberwarriors, cyberweapon

Please, add a space after each comma. Then you're my savior ... of the hour.

After each cybercomma.

… comes a cyberspace.

2000™

could this trip google spam filters?

Probably the cyberspam filters, yes.

I doubt it. Google's heuristics are a lot more sophisticated these days due to SEO wars. If you blocked a website for just being spammy in one aspect, you could be blocking a genuinely useful resource or even a website being targeted by malicious parties. I also doubt keyword stuffing in a single HN page would do much to its overall rank.

I noticed that too. It made me question the credibility of the author, because it makes them sound ancient.

This seems to be the standard terminology used by folks government, policy analysis, and journalism.

cyber-cyberword cybercompilation.

It's funnier when you read every 'cyber' as 'spider'.

"Cybering" for those exposed in the early 2000's slang in AIM public chat rooms was the equivalent of "sexting". Gives a whole new meaning to these words!

>Now intelligence officials estimate that North Korea reaps hundreds of millions a dollars a year from ransomware, digital bank heists, online video game cracking, and more recently, hacks of South Korean Bitcoin exchanges.

How does "online video game cracking" even compare to the other items listed?

Most titles are cracked by elite teams of reverse engineers who are mostly located in Western countries, and they do it for free.

All I can figure is they're providing cracking support to street-level piracy operations that primarily deal with heavily localized software or games that the mainstream scene wouldn't normally touch. Perhaps the author was referring to the sale of cheats, or even real money trading in MMO games.

Whichever the case, I find the mention odd given it has no further explanation. It almost sounds like a nod to special interests, except there's no telltale mention of film piracy beyond the Sony affair.

Gold farming? Hacking mobile games (and their payment systems)?

I'm also a bit confused, but there are ways to turn "game accounts" into cash in a lot of spaces....

Kinda feel like intelligence officials are not exactly at the beck and call of the ESA.

>... Hacking mobile games (and their payment systems)?

Good point. Add social games to that as well. It's probably easier to pull off shady activity when targeting a sea of shady activity in the first place.

>Kinda feel like intelligence officials are not exactly at the beck and call of the ESA.

DHS and State do tow that line, however. Intellectual property and anti-piracy matters are a non-trivial component of U.S. foreign policy these days.

I suppose that they were talking about cracking online video games which allow exchange of digital goods for money, as a way to make money for NK.

I'd like to see proof.

For starters this is BS

"Once North Korea counterfeited crude $100 bills"

These notes are so good they were fooling US banks at one stage only the reserve could identity them.

I'd also note initially it was being reported it was Iran producing the superdollar but now that's shifted. US intelligence isn't as accurate as people seem to think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar

Honest question, can you learn netsec etc. without many thousands of hours of "fooling around" on the internet? Participating in online discussion boards, reading postmortems and documentation, listening to conference speakers? How does the military train it? I have trouble believing you can develop these skillsets without carte blanche to the internet. Are they importing talent from surrounding regions? Do they just run "dumb" hacking tools made by others against low hanging fruit?

sure you can learn it without all that. hacking is just a puzzle, with the most intuitive use being the GUI presented, but needing to learning how to look at the puzzle.

concepts of privilege escalation are simple, and most organizations are vulnerable with low hanging fruit.

I suspect a lot of important personnel in NK (including some programmers and some university students; that set probably overlaps a lot) have access to the internet, or at least most of it, even if monitored. So don't assume that they're not learning in isolation. But even if so, there are common principles you could study from books and test systems. (They'd be smart to apply their people to securing their own systems as well with red/blue teams...) Plus if you know your target, you can dedicate your time to finding ways to attack that target, you don't need to keep up to date with the latest from e.g. tech talks.

If North Korea is so poor, how can they afford nuclear weapons, ballistic missles and skilled hackers? In the long-term, an impoverished population would make it harder, not easier.

Are they not as poor as reported; or are they supplied by another?

First two paragraphs

"When North Korean hackers tried to steal $1 billion from the New York Federal Reserve last year, only a spelling error stopped them. They were digitally looting an account of the Bangladesh Central Bank, when bankers grew suspicious about a withdrawal request that had misspelled “foundation” as “fandation.”

Even so, Kim Jong-un’s minions still got away with $81 million in that heist"

Exactly, and I wonder how much they made from WannaCry.

http://www.ibtimes.co.in/north-korea-behind-deadly-wannacry-...

Also we should remember that North Korean hackers don't receive Silicon Valley salaries; whatever remuneration they receive is purely at the pleasure of the palace.

Well, the NSA is behind the exploit. They're the ones who were sitting on the 0day that got leaked.

That's only 81 million revenue. The profit might be much smaller. The resources to Spy on the bank officials and creating the malware that style the credentials would certainly not have been free.

It's still a country of 25 million, and the state technically owns everything. The internet units most likely pay for themselves and then some, since much of their activity is theft.

They are very poor, and have gotten poorer since the last round of sanctions went through. However when you chose to build rockets rather than feed people, you can make your dollar stretch a bit further.

Actually North Korea has been growing economically, and rather substantially. The latest sanctions may change some of that.

EDIT: Much of that growth is (or was) due to limited market liberalization, the "jangmadang" or local marketplaces, tolerated since the famines of the 1990's, then more or less officially acknowledged. Trade with China is involved here.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-northkorea-economy-gdp/no...

Interesting, I knew their economy had picked up a bit what I wasn't aware of the extent, thanks for the link.

Roughly 25% of their GDP is spent on military spending. Military first is the official policy, likely due to the whole invasion problems they had in the 20th century.

Yeah, that and other nation building going around last few decades (iraq, libya, etc) You reap what you sow, I guess.

Because they put the military before anything else. They're still a nation state, and have enough funds to buy things (know-how included) in the black market.

Hacking apparently pays for itself and then some. I'm certain they're not paying them $150,000 a year plus 401K benefits.

>and have enough funds to buy things.

Yea but the real answer is opportunity cost.

When it is a gun to your head between physical labor, or winning favor with the guy with the guns, it's an easy decision. In other words, they dont need money to motivate you because your opportunity cost is so miserable.

And even if they didn't pay for themselves, all an IT worker neess is a computer and internet connection.

Look at some of the most talented black hat hackers, Barnaby Jack was just a guy with no education hanging out on welfare with a computer. Sabu was just a drug dealer living in the projects. Jeremy Hammond was a PC repairman that liked to go to political protests. We're kidding ourselves that to be a good engineer (or anything for that matter) you need to somehow be "high class," have branded credentials, and come with an expensive salary.

I was thinking also that ingenuity requires freedom (or, is greatly facilitated by it).

(Those examples happen to be people with more latitute than most.)

Ransomware is from North Korea? Is it true? Or just a piece of propaganda preparing to attack North Korea, to have approvement of people?

The Russian bot accounts are out in force apparently.

Yes it is well-known NK has been involved in various ransomware schemes. They seem unique in being state-sponsored. Most of the Russian, Chinese, and US schemes are criminal enterprises.

Green account too

Well, not well known to me. And in case of wannacry, where the nyt states as a fact it was north corea, that is news to me, as I never saw any proof.

Might be possible or even likely, yes, but I do not like things presented to me as a fact if it isn't one.

I wonder what will Scott is up to these days https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/z4m8qx/how-to-tea... and if he has second thoughts

Why should he? There's nothing suggesting his pupils are involved, and a teacher isn't at fault for their students transgressions.

You can chose who to teach

And anyone you choose to teach could use that lesson maliciously.

OK. What is I taught chemical warfare to SS? Would your opinion be the same?

Strangely, I see a difference between teaching a voluntary paramilitary organization a method of warfare and teaching college students some computer science that they potentially could build on to cause harm.

If I remove the hyperbole, I do not blame the physics and chemistry teachers of the 30's for the horrors of WWII.

"You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war." - Napoleon

I still find it hard to believe that NK is doing all this and not Russia or China or any other country for that matter.

Well, it’s still working for NK, regardless of who funded it.

Also, I think China is exceedingly unlikely to be the source here, especially when it’s been established the recent nuke technology came from the Ukraine.

Source for the Ukraine claim?

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/asia/north-korea-mi...

Why ? North Korea needs foreign reserves.

And since they aren't part of the world economy and can't be punished why should they care about the implications. And I spent time in Pyongyang and spoke with an Indian worker there. North Korea was running secret 4G mesh networks off their fibre optic network very early on so clearly what people see/believe isn't the reality.

Russia and China have much to lose if they get caught at this (especially China). NK doesn't.

Sure but the internet for NK runs via China and Russia. Be easy for them to make it look like it’s from NK.

> Workers remove a poster for “The Interview” from a billboard in Hollywood, California, on December 18, 2014, a day after Sony announced it would cancel the movie’s Christmas release and pull it from theaters.

The only thing that I'm aware of that was pulled(since I was born) because of similar reasons were movies released around 9/11[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_affected...

There's a lot of other examples, depending on how old you are.

"These included “Earshot,” an episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” that features a potential school shooter in a clocktower and was originally scheduled to air one week after the Columbine High School shootings occurred; “Mike and Molly” had a tornado-themed season finale episode postponed due to the real-life devastation incurred by the Oklahoma tornadoes; the “Reunion” episode of “Haven,” which featured gun violence occurring in a school, was due to air the very same day that the Sandy Hook shootings took place and was hastily pulled; “Family Guy” episode “Turban Cowboy” showed Peter plowing through the runners at the Boston Marathon, and when the bombings occurred a few months after it aired"

http://www.indiewire.com/2014/07/10-controversial-tv-episode...

There are also movies

"Space Camp was delayed back in 1986 following the Challenger explosion" "Trespass was originally called "The Looters" and (I think) it was set to show prior to the L.A. Riots. It got pushed to Christmas."

https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/549045-movies-came-out-...

I think the article is overexaggerating. Nuclear weapon and nuclear threats are real. One nuclear bomb can kill hundred thousand civilians (because nuclear weapon is a weapon effective only against civilians). "Cyberweapon" is a joke.

I don't know whether South Korean cities have bomb shelters but they better have.

True, but if hostile agents could somehow sabotage essential things like power for a large enough geographical areas, bad things will happen. Long lasting bad things.

There are a lot of bomb shelters at least in Seoul.

I wonder why North Koreans haven't yet started a darknet market of some sort. They have the skills, the means and it's not like they have moral qualms about that sort of a thing.

To hack, don't people need access to the world at large, or at least the internet part of the world at large?

Would if not be possible to subvert North Korean hacking activities by using propaganda?

The Mythical 6000-man Month.

the idea that kim is trying to make his cyber program an alternative to his nuclear program, as suggested at the very end of the article, is completely wrong. the nuclear program is kims number one priority and it will remain so until it is completed. north korea is racing against the clock to develop a nuke, just like iran, because it is the only way that the country can survive. without a nuke, north korea will eventually give in to western influence and ultimately western powers will provoke a destabilization event and put their own person into power. the one and only thing that will prevent that is a nuclear weapon.

>north korea is racing against the clock to develop a nuke, just like iran,

I was kinda with you until you had to casually accuse Iran of violating the JCPOA.

China already prevents a western power from some kind of coup, that's why it hasn't happened already. A nuke is necessary to prevent more Chinese supported coups.

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