South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

Post by xenospn » Thu, Jun 27, 2024, 1:10 AM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #11

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…

Post by lifthrasiir » Thu, Jun 27, 2024, 1:12 AM UTC

nayuki wrote: post #7

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…

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.

Post by kijin » Thu, Jun 27, 2024, 1:24 AM UTC

WatchDog wrote: post #31

brokenmachine wrote: post #6

Unfortunately, it's not explained in the article how the malware was actually sent to users. I wonder how they did it.

Yeah, until any details are provided, I would just assume that the ISP already requires that users install some kind of software, and they just pushed the malware through that program.

Post by downrightmike » Thu, Jun 27, 2024, 1:30 AM UTC

jrflowers wrote: post #20

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

Post by downrightmike » Thu, Jun 27, 2024, 1:32 AM UTC

jjmarr wrote: post #35

pennybanks wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly Competition theory assumes that if firms are abusing their market position by overcharging consumers, competitors can enter the market and undercut them. When you have a market with very high barriers to entry (government regulation + physical infrastructure costs), you can't just start your own internet service provider to undercut existing Korean telecommunications, be…