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South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

tomshardware.com

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Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#11

Post by yongjik »

Aerroon wrote: post #2

Unsurprisingly, 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…

South Korea at least used to have blazingly fast internet infrastructure. Of course that didn't make up for shitty banking websites that you could only use by running Internet Explorer and allowing it to install "security plugins" that hook into Windows kernel, but at least the internet was fast, and it did give Korea an edge for its IT industry.

That was, I think, about twenty years ago.

I've been living in the US for 10+ years so I'm not very well informed, but basically the ISP industry ended up in an oligopoly where everybody's friends with the government, and they kept raising prices while neglecting infra upgrade. Until nobody can call Korea's internet "fast" any more.

Now all we've got is shitty websites. (To be fair, they are somewhat less shitty now... you can now access your banking websites on Mac!)

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#12

Post by ryandrake »

Aerroon wrote: post #2

Unsurprisingly, 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…

> According to the news report, KT said it directly planted the malware on its customers that use Webhard’s Grid Service, as it was a malicious program and that “it had no choice but to control it.”

Looks like the major ISP and some cloud service provider are having some kind of ridiculous fight, and they're using their customers' computers as the battlefield. I'd be pretty disgusted if I were a customer.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#13

Post by pennybanks »

chunsj wrote: post #10

South 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.

wouldnt competition naturally produce better products if there are 3 providers? from what i remember services from companies, or really any type of services were top notch in korea. due to culture, competition, etc. also noting pricing in general is very high in korea

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#15

Post by arepublicadoceu »

pennybanks wrote: post #13
chunsj wrote: post #10

South 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.

wouldnt competition naturally produce better products if there are 3 providers? from what i remember services from companies, or really any type of services were top notch in korea. due to culture, competition, etc. also noting pricing in general is very high in korea

I’m not sure how is the reality in South Korea but, if my country is anything to go by, these 3 companies are probably a hidden cartel that monopolizes the price and offers while offering the bare minimum.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#16

Post by cortesoft »

silotis wrote: post #5
batch12 wrote: post #3

Did 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 am wondering if this is one of those "using the term bittorrent for anything peer to peer" cases... maybe Webhard has its own peer-to-peer protocol that is more vulnerable, and they are just calling it bittorrent?

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#18

Post by shiroiushi »

>Police officials acted on the information and discovered it came from KT’s own data center south of Seoul. ... They’ve since identified and charged 13 individuals, including KT employees and subcontractors directly connected to the malware attack last November,...

I'm actually very impressed. If this happened in the US, the police wouldn't care about it at all, and would just tell everyone affected that "it's a civil matter" and they'll have to file a lawsuit if they don't like it.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#19

Post by bee_rider »

Aerroon wrote: post #2

Unsurprisingly, 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…

I imagine keeping at the front of the pack on any infrastructure investment is very difficult. I mean, it’s an investment, you want to give it time to amortize, right?

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#20

Post by jrflowers »

shiroiushi wrote: post #18

>Police officials acted on the information and discovered it came from KT’s own data center south of Seoul. ... They’ve since identified and charged 13 individuals, including KT employees and subcontractors directly connected to the malware attack last November,... I'm actually very impressed. If this happened in the US, the police wouldn't care about it at all, and would just tell everyone affected that "it's a civi…

This makes sense because the US does not have a set of laws that criminalize Computer Fraud and Abuse
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