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North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

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Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#241

Post by 10987654321 »

lp0_on_fire wrote: post #177
whakim wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not being able to use arms absolutely is an infringement of the right to bear them. That doesn't follow. The right to own something does not imply the right to use it. > One point that gets lost about the 2nd Amendment is that it should be considered an inalienable right. Meaning, it cannot be diminished by any law of man. Consequently, most of the gun laws can be viewed as fundamentally unconstitutional, and any a…

> That doesn't follow. The right to own something does not imply the right to use it. That's like saying "The right to own a pair of pants does not mean you have the right to wear them." or "The right to own that Rembrandt doesn't mean you have the right to look at it". What, if not to use or consume an item, is the purpose of ownership at the fundamental level? > The Constitution does not and cannot bestow inalienab…

Or like saying that "The right to own a car does not mean that you have the right to drive it".

Or even "The right to own a car does not mean that you have the right to drive through red lights".

The fact that you can own something does not mean that you have the right to use it indiscriminately. In this case (if we consider them "digital arms") I don't see how using it for retribution (rather then self defense) would be considered ok.

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#242

Post by wspess »

excalibur wrote: post #37
ballenf wrote: post #2

I would have advised him to stay quiet about this. Not out of fear of the North Koreans, but out of fear of our own security agencies seeing the activity as interfering in international relations. Also the vagueness of our hacking laws probably make what he did a crime. But I also am immensely proud that we have people willing to take things into their own hands when needed. Also, I feel like the 2nd amendment should…

> Also the vagueness of our hacking laws probably make what he did a crime. Yes, it is most definitely and intentionally illegal. Things don't stop being crimes just because the victims are communists.

Sorry for being pedantic but the State of North Korea does not claim to be communist but rather "socialist Juche" which is very different from Marxism-Leninism and other "communisms".

http://naenara.com.kp/main/index/en/politics?arg_val=leader3

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#243

Post by npteljes »

arbitrage wrote: post #50
sudobash1 wrote: post #3

> So after a year of letting his resentment simmer, P4x has taken matters into his own hands. “It felt like the right thing to do here. If they don’t see we have teeth, it’s just going to keep coming,” says the hacker. Frankly, I feel that international relations are going poorly enough without vigilantes poking the bear. And also, I doubt that bringing down their network infrastructure will have the desired effect o…

NK's capabilities are vastly overblown. Calling it a "bear" is part of their disinformation strategy, just like Russia. You're amplifying their propaganda.

States don't exist in a vacuum, they exist in a complex web of relations to other states. North Korea is in a particular intersection between South Korea, the United States, Russia and China. I think if you do anything with NK, you also signal something to these others. If you look at it like this, it becomes apt to say "poking the bear".

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#244

Post by npteljes »

schwanky wrote: post #6

It's easy to accuse North Korea. They can't practically respond to the accusations because they have no outlet anyone reads, and if anyone did then nobody would care anyway.

And if the systems are as vulnerable as one would think, then they are also an attractive target for a false flag operation, I'd think.

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#245

Post by logiccontroller »

pmalynin wrote: post #44
ballenf wrote: post #2

I would have advised him to stay quiet about this. Not out of fear of the North Koreans, but out of fear of our own security agencies seeing the activity as interfering in international relations. Also the vagueness of our hacking laws probably make what he did a crime. But I also am immensely proud that we have people willing to take things into their own hands when needed. Also, I feel like the 2nd amendment should…

We’ll it’s interesting in this case, because technically speaking a peace treaty was never signed and North Korea is in the state of war with the United States. So is it really a crime to attack a hostile state?

Probably if you are a civilian.

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#246

Post by Communitivity »

You can admire his spirit, but not his judgement or actions.

Attacking a foreign power, or serving a foreign power's military, are both crimes from what I know (am not a lawyer, but cybersecurity tangential).

Specifically, taking out the power affects everyone who lost power, and could be construed as an attack that causes harm to foreign officials. As a result I'd think https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/112 applies. Again, not a lawyer, but the days of hacktivist actions without major retributions have been gone since the early 90s (hackers often get worse sentences than rapists or murderers). It's a different world now, more's the pity. For some background I recommend The Hacker Crackdown (https://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html)

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#247

Post by smsm42 »

ballenf wrote: post #2

I would have advised him to stay quiet about this. Not out of fear of the North Koreans, but out of fear of our own security agencies seeing the activity as interfering in international relations. Also the vagueness of our hacking laws probably make what he did a crime. But I also am immensely proud that we have people willing to take things into their own hands when needed. Also, I feel like the 2nd amendment should…

It's not about "vagueness" - intentionally messing up somebody else's computer or network (without owner's permission) is a crime, and it's not vague in any computer crime statute worth its name. Granted, if somebody had it coming and deserves this and much more, it's North Korea, but that doesn't change the nature of the deed. I don't think US authorities will be eager to prosecute, but that doesn't change the nature of it.

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#248

Post by snowwrestler »

voakbasda wrote: post #209
snowwrestler wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but is it legal if you’re not in the act of defending yourself? If you just walk up to someone who made you mad, and shoot them? No. Which means there are legal limits on how you can use your guns.

Yes, murder would be illegal without just cause, but then it doesn't matter what weapon is used, does it? In which case, you're trying to blame the weapon, rather than the person. I agree there should be legal limits on what you can do to someone else's person, but that policy does not require placing unconstitutional limits on gun use.

It doesn’t matter whether what kind of weapon. And in fact if you go up to my first comment, you’ll see I used the more general term “arms”.

You’ve decided to focus on guns in your comments, but that’s not a distinction that matters to my point.

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#249

Post by jallbrit »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #67
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, the bear poked him first...

The article says he downloaded a hacking tool for a friend into a VM that had a back door. Then goes on to say he was “personally targeted”. This is ridiculous.

I'm not sure that's what the article is saying, and I certainly don't think it's "ridiculous". The relevant part:

> In late January of 2021, he opened a file sent to him by a fellow hacker, who had described it as an exploitation tool. Just 24 hours later, he spotted a blog post from Google Threat Analysis Group warning that North Korean hackers were targeting security researchers. Sure enough, when P4x scrutinized the hacking tool he'd received from a stranger, he saw that it contained a backdoor designed to provide a remote foothold on his computer. P4x had opened the file in a virtual machine, digitally quarantining it from the rest of his system. But he was nonetheless shocked and appalled by the realization that he'd been personally targeted by North Korea.

The article specifically states he received it "from a stranger", not a friend, which suggests that he was indeed personally targeted. Yes, it does say "fellow hacker", but again this is obviously not someone he knows because it's a "stranger".

I guess it comes down to your definition of "personally targeted". Sure, this isn't a spearphishing campaign, but according to Google's blog writeup about these events [1], they basically targeted individual researchers:

> The actors have been observed targeting specific security researchers by a novel social engineering method. After establishing initial communications, the actors would ask the targeted researcher if they wanted to collaborate on vulnerability research together...

[1] https://blog.google/threat-analysis-group/new-campaign-targe...

Re: North Korea hacked him, so he took down its internet

#250

Post by rapjr9 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #233
throwaway4good wrote: post #113

This is nothing to celebrate. Would we like random people sitting in say North Korea taking cyber revenge over evil regimes they don't like?

Surprised that I have to scroll that far for this comment. Imagine the US or South Korea is negotiating say, prisoner releases or family reunifications and then some dude causes what looks like an American cyberattack on North Korea. Warfare falls within the domain of the state, that includes cyberspace. Americans love their vigilantes but this has the potential to be incredibly destructive. It's no different from th…

Cyberattacks are different then sending a warship or dropping a bomb though. They are harder to attribute and anyone knowledgeable and willing to the spend the time can carry them out. There have long been cyberattacks by criminals on companies in other countries, but attacks by individuals on governments are also possible as we now see. It seems likely others will emulate this and there is no obvious way to stop it from happening. It may be illegal but you have to find the person responsible first. Current cyberdefenses obviously are porous. Warfare used to be the domain of the state mainly because only the state had the capabilities (and some corporations have had and used similar capabilites, like oil companies with their own private armies). An individual could travel somewhere and start throwing bombs but the amount of damage they could do was small. Instead of a DDoS attack this guy could have decided to brick all computers in North Korea. I don't see a way these kinds of attacks can be stopped and they seem likely to cause a lot of havoc in the world. Basically, imagine ransomware with a political motive behind it launched by individuals with a goal of destruction rather than Bitcoin. It's actually kind of surprising there haven't already been many instances of it, or maybe there have.
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