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Comment by notlukesky | Hacker News Reader

I am suspicious of the North Korea attack as this attack requires a more sophisticated attack method which automatically limits the suspects to US, Russia, Israel, Germany, UK and France.

The CIA actively worked to undermine the Indian nuclear program over decades. So would not be surprised if they still had the infrastructure in place to carry out these attacks as well.

This attack had to have boots on the ground to pull off and some sort of insider access as well.

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>this attack requires a more sophisticated attack method which automatically limits the suspects to US, Russia, Israel, Germany, UK and France.

What about China? They undoubtedly have the capability. As for motivation, they’re a regional and economic competitor who shares a disputed border with India.

Oh no doubt about it. China covertly supports anti-Indian NGOs. There have been at least 2 documented cases of China supporting NGOs protesting against nuclear power in Kundakalam and NGOs supporting the closure of a copper manufacturing facility in TN. The latter resulted in loss of many jobs and made it easier for China to dump excess Copper in India.

I feel it is China to be honest.

1. https://www.quora.com/Do-the-Tamil-Nadu-people-realise-the-S...

I am not sure that getting commodity style malware onto a internet connected workstation is truly considered sophisticated, but i am on board with caution before attribution.

I have not seen any further confirmed details in this or any other articles, how do you determine the necessity of boots on the ground?

>automatically limits the suspects to US, Russia, Israel, Germany, UK and France.

given the reactors for that power plant were built in collaboration with Russia, and the sabotaged Indian nuclear submarine is a modified Russian "Akula" design, i think this is rare case when Russia can be stricken from the list :)

I meant the capability of pulling off such an attack is quite limited.

Although, what if someone wanted to cover up their incompetence by blaming it on hackers. The classic Hanlon’s razor at work:

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/india-did-major-damag...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

No, it isn’t. Way more countries than you have listed are easily capable of this.

While this is a possibility, North Korea does have motive in looking to gather nuclear program info via hacking.

You're forgetting China, which is #1 in my list.

Also, North Korea has had a relationship with Pakistan, where the Pakis shared nuclear know-how and NK shared missile know-how. So, it could be NK-Pak combine.

Pakistan and NK relations have basically been non-existent since the early 2000s. On the other hand, India has had relations with NK fairly recently with trade being quire large, ambassadors visiting late last year etc.

I had similar thoughts. Of course its NK, the most convenient nation state boogeyman we have in 2019. They are barely on the internet, yet somehow there is a large enough community of North Korean hackers such that their government can form this fantastical "Lazarus" hacking group from their constituents? Lazarus, which is purportedly capable of subverting nuclear power station security, exfiltrating 100TB of data from Sony, et. al.? Surely that doesn't require a huge range of unique talents which are best developed in an open and free society... I am at a point where NK is largely a CIA front.

Don't forget that East Germany and the Soviet Union routinely beat the West in things like IMO competitions..

North Korea has a large population to draw upon, 25 million people.

Genius existed before open and free societies.

The North Koreans are very sophisticated wrt computer science. They seem more than capable of attacks of this kind.

That being said, attacking the Indians doesn't really jive with their political aims. CIA makes way more sense.

> That being said, attacking the Indians doesn't really jive with their political aims.

It does make sense for China’s geopolitical aims, and currying favor with China while but implicating them is quite in line with DPRK interests.

> CIA makes way more sense.

CIA attacking India right now makes no sense, whatever the policy on their nuclear program might have been in the past, but then US foreign policy is such a complete mess right now that “makes no sense ” isn't really a strong argument against it being true.

Russia is increasingly dependent on selling of Soviet technology to keep their state propped up. Making it much more difficult for their customers to use that technology absolutely achieves the foreign policy goals of the CIA.

Probably china as there are often issues going on at indo china border

Dibs on this being US. maybe not for nefarious purposes but to check if any weapons are being developed?

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