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I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

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Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#41

Post by JumpCrisscross »

terryf wrote: post #39
londons_explore wrote: post #25

Such 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…

> attack did not affect any of them to any extent

Probably didn’t. Can’t say definitively. Shipments of critical resources could have been disrupted, et cetera.

Doing this with zero context was probably reckless by this hacker. It also likely had zero real-world consequences.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#42

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway8877 wrote: post #28
londons_explore wrote: post #25

Such 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?

They are heavily sanctioned criminal country that is openly aiding a genocidal regime. If anything is then your comment is morally dubious.

[deleted]

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#43

Post by DocTomoe »

paganel wrote: post #2

Why 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 .

Don't worry, the North Koreans, if sufficiently pissed, will take care of him.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#44

Post by csomar »

paganel wrote: post #2

Why 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 .

> Why isn’t he in prison?

He very much could, if politics changed. The US hates NK not because they are authoritarian but because they are not aligned. If they were to be aligned, and this guy didn't act on proper authorization, he could find himself in hot waters in the USA.

Plus he might have broken a bunch of "international" rules which could see him in trouble if he was to travel to some countries.

It is really reckless; but then there is a good chance he was acting behind some agency.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#45

Post by smangold »

londons_explore wrote: post #25

Such 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?

I agree with that statement. What's the point in embarrassing that regime. Some IT guys might get in pretty serious trouble now. Good that you found out though, impressive work.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#46

Post by csomar »

gorbachev wrote: post #29
londons_explore wrote: post #25

Such 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?

Yes and no. Only the elite in that country has access to the Internet. The starving citizens do not have access to the Internet, and even if they do/did, they're so heavily monitored the minute they even glanced at something controversial they'd be shipped to a concentration camp.

> Only the elite in that country has access to the Internet.

Sure, but then the overall population might be depending on it indirectly.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#47

Post by WesternWind »

I'm unsure on the ethics of this.

Yes only the elite have the internet, but also the internet is likely used internally for communication, which is important for resource distribution.

I don't give two shits about the elite in NK, but the starving folks living there have my deepest sympathy.

I'm lucky to have a lot of advantages, and I can't help but see many of them as an accident of birth.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#48

Post by onion2k »

terryf wrote: post #39
londons_explore wrote: post #25

Such 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…

Good result.

There's rarely such a thing as a clear, objectively simple 'good result' for this sort of action because outcomes have knock-on effects. For example, if the North Koreans responsible for maintaining internet access were executed over this that diminishes the result significantly.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#49

Post by sim7c00 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #9
paganel wrote: post #2

Why 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 .

> 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…

there is a lot of 'looking the other way' when it comes to people hacking 'adversaries'. Just look at people going at russia's network now. western authorities arent exactly busy trying to stop that. i imagine similar priorities for NK, china and other places.

Re: I'm the hacker that brought down North Korea's Internet for over a week. AMA

#50

Post by lye »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16
verisimi wrote: post #10

Nothing about this ama/article suggests that NK is anything but a Potemkin country - a false baddie for others to hide behind. The NK idea is useful to agencies, in certain circumstances.

> Potemkin country Maybe they’re another Russia, their tanks and artillery all crumpets. But maybe not. They have a lot of them on paper [1]. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_equipment_of_the_Kor...

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