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Countering threats from North Korea

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Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#131

Post by boomboomsubban »

bamboozled wrote: post #130
kettleballroll wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we have these exact types of sanctions already in place i. NK for exactly the reasons you mention?

Sure, they're not working well enough by the look of it... The people are severely repressed, it's hard to imagine how much North Koreans suffer, look up Yeonmi Park's story. What we seem to do is ignore these maniacs, until it's too late or it's absolutely critical, then they hold us hostage, like Putin.

This argument makes no sense. You want to do more of something that isn't working, and your solution to suffering is to make the people poorer.

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#132

Post by mathrawka »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #104
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read about it on HN some months ago. I don’t recall if it was in comments or an article. But I read the info and sources and was convinced enough at the time. I’m sorry I didn’t save the original info. I’ll try some googling “geolocation from SMS” and see what I can find.

Here’s the best I could find: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18523417/can-i-retrieve-... (Twilio is awesome by the way)

That information is completely derived from the phone number.

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#133

Post by rtpg »

azinman2 wrote: post #82
huntsman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’ll find TAG regularly gives assessment on attribution at least at the country level. Iran, China, Russia, Belarus and North Korea at least have been named in the last few years. (Disclaimer: I am head of TAG)

How do you know what country is actually behind any of this? I’d imagine that would be very difficult given nation states can host content anywhere in the world and will want to make it look like it’s coming from elsewhere.

Staring hard at a all the details and figuring it out?

The thing with trying to hide yourself is you have to do everything right to guarantee some false flag operation will work but if you make enough mistakes in this process there will be reasonably high-confidence links between some action and some person.

An example that I _have_ seen in some write up: some snippet of malware code showing up in a stack overflow question (with the shape and user variables being the same).

At one point it's like... probably that person. Of course maybe there are other indicators to the contrary but that's data for you. Gotta use your noggin a bit.

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#134

Post by shakna »

jorvi wrote: post #109
mot0rola wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am receiving increased SMS spam past week. Is connected to this exploit? Msgs are all different domains with unique ID appended.

Hearing Americans regularly complain about SMS and robocall spam still blows my European mind. I haven't received a single spam call or SMS in my life, ever. Back in the 90s and early 2000s the worst that could happen was, say, texting a commercial number to get a polyphone ringtone, and that actually being a subscription. But obviously that is something you have to initiate first, not something passive.

I, in Australia, had never received a spam call or SMS, until two years ago. I now receive several per day. All automatically blocked, but still.

My number was leaked in a particular data breach that actually had nothing to do with me, but a different family member who had all of their contacts vacuumed up before the breach. So from my perspective it was passive.

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#135

Post by mcintyre1994 »

saagarjha wrote: post #112
blondin wrote: post #18

it is interesting that most of the CVEs are "use after free". instead of being stuck in an endless cycle of detection and patching, maybe, it's time we consider better ways...

Ah, yes, I’m sure the Chrome team is entirely unfamiliar with ways to improve memory safety. Snark aside, every browser vendor is working on this, it’s just that migrating is nontrivial.

What approaches are being considered here out of interest? I’m only familiar with Firefox’s use of Rust, but haven’t heard anything about other browsers trying to use that particular approach.

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#136

Post by KarlKemp »

harry8 wrote: post #92
thematrixturtle wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

APT38/Lazarus has been around for years and has been investigated by many professional groups across the world (Kaspersky, McAfee, Mandiant, etc), many not connected to the US government. Are you alleging that they're all wrong and this is all some vast conspiracy to frame an innocent North Korea and protect... who, exactly?

Think of all the big, serious and sensible news organisations that independently reported WMD in Iraq while not being connected to the US government. Are you alleging they're all wrong and this is some vast conspiracy to frame an innocent Iraq and protect.. who, exactly? Evidence is evidence. After WMD (which totally took me in, btw, you too?) Claims that evidence is "just over there" and "here are multiple different…

News orgs reported claims by the US that Iraq had nuclear ambitions. No news org claimed to have “independently verified” it.

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#137

Post by berdario »

bamboozled wrote: post #130
kettleballroll wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't we have these exact types of sanctions already in place i. NK for exactly the reasons you mention?

Sure, they're not working well enough by the look of it... The people are severely repressed, it's hard to imagine how much North Koreans suffer, look up Yeonmi Park's story. What we seem to do is ignore these maniacs, until it's too late or it's absolutely critical, then they hold us hostage, like Putin.

Yeonmi Park claimed that it takes months to go from one place to another, and that they'd have to push trains (!!)

https://youtu.be/KK6psAnynUA

(edit: another old article that points out inconsistencies in Yeonmi Park statements: https://thediplomat.com/2014/12/the-strange-tale-of-yeonmi-p... ... The JRE interview wasn't a fluke)

I don't think that you can reasonably treat Yeonmi Park as a reliable witness.

North Korea's train network is 4700km long, though it is not perfect... If you want to travel from Pyongyang to Chongjin for example, you're better off flying there

https://youtu.be/GpxOsJYobeA

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#138

Post by erk__ »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #135
saagarjha wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, yes, I’m sure the Chrome team is entirely unfamiliar with ways to improve memory safety. Snark aside, every browser vendor is working on this, it’s just that migrating is nontrivial.

What approaches are being considered here out of interest? I’m only familiar with Firefox’s use of Rust, but haven’t heard anything about other browsers trying to use that particular approach.

The edge team have talked about it a bit in the following blog posts:

https://microsoftedge.github.io/edgevr/posts/Super-Duper-Sec...

https://microsoftedge.github.io/edgevr/posts/Introducing-Enh...

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#139

Post by eru »

jorvi wrote: post #109
mot0rola wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am receiving increased SMS spam past week. Is connected to this exploit? Msgs are all different domains with unique ID appended.

Hearing Americans regularly complain about SMS and robocall spam still blows my European mind. I haven't received a single spam call or SMS in my life, ever. Back in the 90s and early 2000s the worst that could happen was, say, texting a commercial number to get a polyphone ringtone, and that actually being a subscription. But obviously that is something you have to initiate first, not something passive.

Here in Singapore SMS and phone spam comes and goes.

At the moment it's pretty bad with lots of calls from overseas. (People with hilariously un-local accents trying to tell you they are calling from the Ministry of Health of Ministry of Manpower...)

Those overseas callers are faking caller id to look like local numbers.

Re: Countering threats from North Korea

#140

Post by eru »

illiac786 wrote: post #124
jorvi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hearing Americans regularly complain about SMS and robocall spam still blows my European mind. I haven't received a single spam call or SMS in my life, ever. Back in the 90s and early 2000s the worst that could happen was, say, texting a commercial number to get a polyphone ringtone, and that actually being a subscription. But obviously that is something you have to initiate first, not something passive.

I live in Germany and I get a lot of spam calls and spam SMS. It's always in waves. Some days I stop answering calls if I don't recognise the number, because its one of these days where Interpol has informwd me already three times that my identity was stolen and I have to give them all my details to fix this ..... They're very patient at Interpol, I keep hanging up on them and they never give up.

When I have a spammer/scammer on the phone (and I actually picked up), I usually just put my phone on mute and stop talking to them. They waste a bit more time that way before they hang up (without more effort from me).
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