South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
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South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
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Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#2Unsurprisingly, terrible Korean internet strikes again. ISPs try to charge companies insane fees because customers want to connect to their servers. Company decides to use peer-ro-peer instead so the ISP starts installing spyware on customer computers.
Makes me wonder where this myth of "good Korean internet" even came from if everything ends up so bandwidth constrained. Is it because all the customers and services are in the same city so it appears low latency?
I hope everyone involved in this catches criminal charges, all the way up the chain. Completely unacceptable behavior.
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#3Did they exploit a vulnerability or MITM the traffic somehow?
Edit: While looking for an answer, I ran across this article. Apparently they've been fighting for a while (2015):
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#4Just charge them 250 a head for the equivalent for analysis and remediation should only cost about 150M usd plus about 10-20M to administer. Liquidate the executives holdings including stock then the companies assets and it will never ever happen again.
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#5Did they exploit a vulnerability or MITM the traffic somehow? Edit: While looking for an answer, I ran across this article. Apparently they've been fighting for a while (2015): https://www.opennetkorea.org/en/wp/1529
Bittorrent normally hash checks all content against metadata in the torrent file so a simple MITM wouldn't be enough to inject malicious data unless the torrent metadata itself is being sent in the clear.
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#6Unfortunately, it's not explained in the article how the malware was actually sent to users. I wonder how they did it.
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#7Unsurprisingly, terrible Korean internet strikes again. ISPs try to charge companies insane fees because customers want to connect to their servers. Company decides to use peer-ro-peer instead so the ISP starts installing spyware on customer computers. Makes me wonder where this myth of "good Korean internet" even came from if everything ends up so bandwidth constrained. Is it because all the customers and services a…
Another memory from the terrible South Korean Internet is how the national banks required customers to log in using Internet Explorer because of mandatory ActiveX blobs of code.
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#8Did they exploit a vulnerability or MITM the traffic somehow? Edit: While looking for an answer, I ran across this article. Apparently they've been fighting for a while (2015): https://www.opennetkorea.org/en/wp/1529
Bittorrent normally hash checks all content against metadata in the torrent file so a simple MITM wouldn't be enough to inject malicious data unless the torrent metadata itself is being sent in the clear.
I had the same thought, i'm very confused about the details of the attacks.
As an ISP if they detect you doing it, and they control DNS servers, maybe they mark your account for death, and they could like randomly hijack you going to google.com to some download for malware, and unsuspecting user clicks accept? Not sure, i'm curious how they pulled this off.
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#9Unsurprisingly, terrible Korean internet strikes again. ISPs try to charge companies insane fees because customers want to connect to their servers. Company decides to use peer-ro-peer instead so the ISP starts installing spyware on customer computers. Makes me wonder where this myth of "good Korean internet" even came from if everything ends up so bandwidth constrained. Is it because all the customers and services a…
> Makes me wonder where this myth of "good Korean internet" even came from if everything ends up so bandwidth constrained.
It is not a myth! A decade ago, though. I would still consider it is "good" in terms of objective metrics, but other countries have since caught up.
> Is it because all the customers and services are in the same city so it appears low latency?
No, because it would only apply to a quarter of the entire population of South Korea if it were true.
Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware
#10South Korean internet had been one of the best and fast network in the world; especially up to the point before KT was privatized. After privatization, three internet service providers have been focusing on exploiting profits, not on making better and faster network infrastructure because they don't have to.