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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

#61

Post by jowea »

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.

The torrentfreak article seems more informative and has links to the source video report https://torrentfreak.com/south-korean-isp-infected-torrentin...

From what I understand of the autotranslation, the ISP planted the malware somehow and that malware interfered with the P2P system, but no mention of actually using the P2P protocol to spread the malware

https://news.jtbc.co.kr/article/article.aspx?news_id=NB12201...

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#62

Post by tchalla »

downrightmike wrote: post #49
jjmarr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The EU forces telcoms and ISPs to allow competition on their infra. Decent prices and good service

Germany checks in.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#63

Post by godelski »

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…

It's also worth noting the SK has some pretty terrible laws around the internet in general. Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials[0]. They have a comparatively low internet freedom score because they do things like fine middle schoolers for having anti-government websites and the president pursues legal action against YouTubers[1].

It's pretty interesting when coming from the west where all the problems are often spoken about in the open. I mean the great American past time is complaining about the government. But in SK there's a lot more trust of the government and similarly, a lot more control by them. And it is a fairly tight knit group and there's only a few companies that dominate the country.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/world/asia/critics-see-so...

[1] https://freedomhouse.org/country/south-korea/freedom-net/202...

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#64

Post by AtlasBarfed »

godelski wrote: post #63
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…

It's also worth noting the SK has some pretty terrible laws around the internet in general. Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials[0]. They have a comparatively low internet freedom score because they do things like fine middle schoolers for having anti-government websi…

It's a lot easier to buy into a government when the most horrid example of one in modern history (arguable, I get it) is only 100 miles to the north with a huge amount of artillery pointed at you.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#65

Post by rfoo »

quanto wrote: post #51
lifthrasiir wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad that all of these started with US's restriction on the export of cryptography, which prompted South Korea (among others) to develop a domestic algorithm that was unsupported by contemporary browsers at that time.

The US export restriction applied to other countries as well. The question is what has made Korean internet uniquely bad.

It wasn't unique to Korean.

15-20 years ago Chinese banking website did exactly same things. Maybe they got the idea from SK, don't know. It only ended with widespread adoption of mobile phones and Chrome.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#66

Post by wetpaws »

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

[dead]

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#67

Post by seoulmetro »

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…

>Is it because all the customers and services are in the same city so it appears low latency?

Yes. It's because the internet of Korea is so well done between nearly all areas of the country with great speeds.

But it's true that Korean internet is super fast only within Korea, but the borders are also normal fast borders to other countries so they're just as fast as say a 1gbps connection in Australia.

Good Korean internet is not a myth, they had fibre everywhere by the time rich people in the US or Europe were getting it. Korean internet is good, it's just that their ISPs are also fairly evil like the rest of the world, but they have less freedom constraining their evils.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#68

Post by seoulmetro »

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…

Korean internet is still extremely fast. It hasn't decreased in price sadly though.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#69

Post by seoulmetro »

quanto wrote: post #51
lifthrasiir wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me sad that all of these started with US's restriction on the export of cryptography, which prompted South Korea (among others) to develop a domestic algorithm that was unsupported by contemporary browsers at that time.

The US export restriction applied to other countries as well. The question is what has made Korean internet uniquely bad.

One guy who developed and marketed and then lobbied a single solution that aged extremely poorly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahn_Cheol-soo

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#70

Post by metadat »

seoulmetro wrote: post #68
yongjik wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Korean internet is still extremely fast. It hasn't decreased in price sadly though.

Gigabit links to the home were cheap in South Korea 20 years ago, something like $50USD/month, IIRC. The population is so dense, it was comparatively quick and easy to put in the infrastructure.

Some of the fastest pirate FTP sites in the world were .kr at the time, it was crazy seeing 125MB/sec inter-site transfers back then.

The ops must've set the machines up with a /dev/shm ramdisk or similar for uploads. There were no SSDs those days, so no way to even write at 125MB/sec, unless you had an unreasonably large Raid-0 array of WD Raptor HDDs, also possible.

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