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I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
31–40 of 173 posts
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#32Why isn’t he in prison? I mean, going by the West’s own laws, or the spirit of them, anyway. Unless he is part of said West’s Armed Forces, in which case this would get really close to a casus belli .
Has NK asked to extradite him? Maybe a swap for the sony hackers?
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why isn’t he in prison? Not an enforcement priority for the same reason a lot of domestic abuse goes unprotected: the victim is uncoöperative. > going by the West’s own laws, or the spirit of them, anyway Pyongyang and prosecutors would have to show he attacked a “protected computer” under the CFAA [1]. Given the two routers he allegedly overwhelmed were internet connected, that shouldn’t technically be hard under…
Privateering is back, baby!
> Privateering is back
Good point: a final hurdle inhibiting criminality is his lack of profits. No disgorgeable gains. That means you’re only left with damages, which again, requires the victim’s coöperation to assess.
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#34Is anyone mining bitcoin in DPRK ?
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#35He contradicts himself left and right. In one comment, he writes that they will never come after him, in another that he's seriously concerned. He writes that he has a lot of serious connections in the DoD up to the highest level, and then explains that he has a way to stop any attack from NK, but nobody will even listen to him.
If only those stupid bureaucrats who have probably maintained persistence inside NK networks for the past two or three decades would just listen.
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#36The hacker doesn't understand what they're getting themselves into, especially bragging about it. The hard part about going up against an entire nation/state is that it's relentless. The state never gets tired and never runs out of money, they could setup a team of people to 'work' on that individual and also potentially his present and future family members for a very long time. They can keep replenishing their team…
Yep, it seems way too many people know who he is irl. I would be not sleep well for the coming decade at least.
Eh, he’s probably safer than if he’d hacked a cartel. North Korea isn’t known for its tradecraft in the United States.
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why isn’t he in prison? Not an enforcement priority for the same reason a lot of domestic abuse goes unprotected: the victim is uncoöperative. > going by the West’s own laws, or the spirit of them, anyway Pyongyang and prosecutors would have to show he attacked a “protected computer” under the CFAA [1]. Given the two routers he allegedly overwhelmed were internet connected, that shouldn’t technically be hard under…
I can imagine he did piss of some agencies? I mean other states could have mapped NK's whole infra, made a plan to take down NK's internet when "needed" (i.e. in case of some event)... Then some dude triggers it just for fun... Some things are too big to just mess around with, I would feel extremely vulnerable having pulled such a stunt.
> can imagine he did piss of some agencies
Sure. But OP asked why he isn’t being arrested. Plenty of people piss off the IC when they publish e.g. long-coveted (and independently discovered) zero days, or write an exposé on something an agency was hoarding for interagency political value.
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#38The hacker doesn't understand what they're getting themselves into, especially bragging about it. The hard part about going up against an entire nation/state is that it's relentless. The state never gets tired and never runs out of money, they could setup a team of people to 'work' on that individual and also potentially his present and future family members for a very long time. They can keep replenishing their team…
Someone engrossed in digital foolery not understanding how the real world works is so stereotypical I wonder if there's more to this.
Incidentally for anyone who's actually paying attention, the first rule in covert actions is being and staying inconspicuous. The real world isn't like Hollywood where people working in the shadows can become celebrities as a side gig.
I hope this guy has a really good security detail now that he painted such a biglyarse target on himself. God damn, man.
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#39Such an attack is, IMO, morally dubious. North Korea is a poor country with millions of starving citizens, and rather than sending food aid, you broke down their only comms to the rest of the world?
The starving, and heavily repressed citizens do not have access to the internet in NK. This attack did not affect any of them to any extent.
Whom it did affect a bit, hopefully, were the people complicit in the repressive dictatorship that runs the country.
The repressive dictatorship that engages in, among many other bad things, scams and online fraud to partially finance the country. For this they of course use the internet. So, taking them off-line for a week may have prevented someone from getting scammed. Good result.
Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why isn’t he in prison? Not an enforcement priority for the same reason a lot of domestic abuse goes unprotected: the victim is uncoöperative. > going by the West’s own laws, or the spirit of them, anyway Pyongyang and prosecutors would have to show he attacked a “protected computer” under the CFAA [1]. Given the two routers he allegedly overwhelmed were internet connected, that shouldn’t technically be hard under…
I can imagine he did piss of some agencies? I mean other states could have mapped NK's whole infra, made a plan to take down NK's internet when "needed" (i.e. in case of some event)... Then some dude triggers it just for fun... Some things are too big to just mess around with, I would feel extremely vulnerable having pulled such a stunt.
or easily spy on ALL internet traffic, which they probably do anyway