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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

#91

Post by lifthrasiir »

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…

I wouldn't comment over other statements, but...

> Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside.

Incorrect, it's yet another incorrect meme. Legal pornography is always possible in South Korea, and while the actual threshold varied over time (because you know, there is no objective metric for them anyway so it has to be a function of the approximate social consensus), legal pornography is not necessarily "milder" than illegal pornography distributed via blocked websites. (EDIT: incorrectly put "stronger" there...)

The South Korean treatment of pornography was extremely distorted mainly because of the rampant copyright violation over pornographic materials produced elsewhere. That blocked virtually all attempts to sell legal pornography and profit from it, why would you pay when you already have tons of free porns out there. Technically speaking, a large portion of the current adult population should have been found guilty if foreign producers could sue them, and I can tell you that the name of a certain blocked but still popular pornographic website [1] has became a household name for many males in their 20s and 30s!

And here is where the SK law's technical distinction between legal pornography and illegal obsence material turned out to be handy. Since those websites distributed pornography illegally, you can just consider them obscene and thus exempted from the copyright protection (!). I really hate this situation and like to see the radical change, but I can also see that it would become a massive and uncontrollable international affair otherwise. So that's why those websites had to be banned (to signal that it is indeed illegal), but the ban itself is so weak that it can be easily bypassed (more effective ban would be harder to justify).

[1] I don't like to quote its exact name, but as a hint, it is often followed by "꺼라 turn sth off".

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#92

Post by somenameforme »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #64
godelski wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

South Korea has a far crazier history [1] than I think most realize. This [2] is the first president of South Korea, installed by the US, and then eventually ferried off into exile in Hawaii by the US after a revolution, leading the 2nd Republic of Korea. That was followed by coups and all other sorts of great things, including 4 acting presidents that did not serve more than 50 days a piece, eventually leading to the 3rd Republic of Korea which was another dictatorship who then had his dictatorial powers codified in the 4th republic. Then he was assassinated and you get the the 5th republic where the dictator's friend was put in power. Then you get the 6th republic in 1987 (!!) and that's the South Korea we're somewhat more familiar with.

Even in modern times, I think most don't realize how wacky Korean politics has been. For instance the president from 2013-2017 (Park Geun-hye, daughter of a former dictator) was involved in some sort of weird cult-like grooming controversy where she was being groomed and controlled by what some media called a 'Korean Rasputin.' She was eventually impeached and imprisoned for corruption/abuse of power, and is now serving decades in prison.

And it seems the current president of South Korea has an approval rating in the 30s. So I have no idea how Koreans view their government, but it's really unlike anything I think that we can compare elsewhere. But I suspect "trust" and "integrity" are not the sort of words that'd be on top.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_South_Korea#

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syngman_Rhee

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#93

Post by AtlasBarfed »

somenameforme wrote: post #92
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

South Korea has a far crazier history [1] than I think most realize. This [2] is the first president of South Korea, installed by the US, and then eventually ferried off into exile in Hawaii by the US after a revolution, leading the 2nd Republic of Korea. That was followed by coups and all other sorts of great things, including 4 acting presidents that did not serve more than 50 days a piece, eventually leading to th…

And they are facing the demographic cliff of demographic cliffs...

Although what I suspect will happen is that North Korea will fall apart eventually and South Korea will get a demographic surge from immigrating North Koreans.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#94

Post by pezezin »

kmeisthax wrote: post #81

Hell Joseon strikes again. For context, the legal situation of network usage in South Korea is something akin to Ajit Pai's wet dream. Network operators are legally empowered to charge troll tolls on both ends of any connection they want. Infrastructure costs are to be borne by literally anyone BUT the network operators. To compound this, South Korea is economically an authoritarian hellscape. Large megacorporations[…

> [0] These are specifically called chaebols and the group includes LG, Hyundai, Samsung, Lotte, and a few others. Japan used to have something similar, but they ate their rich... and then brutally invaded and colonized half of East Asia.

More like the Allied occupation forced them to dissolve the zaibatsu. They later reformed as the keiretsu, and while still immensely powerful, are nowhere the level of the old zaibatsu or the Korean chaebol.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#95

Post by sooheon »

somenameforme wrote: post #92
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

South Korea has a far crazier history [1] than I think most realize. This [2] is the first president of South Korea, installed by the US, and then eventually ferried off into exile in Hawaii by the US after a revolution, leading the 2nd Republic of Korea. That was followed by coups and all other sorts of great things, including 4 acting presidents that did not serve more than 50 days a piece, eventually leading to th…

> and is now serving decades in prison.

I wish. It's a national tradition to jail and then pardon the president. She's been free for years, and is often kow-towing and gladhanding current administration members.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#96

Post by actionfromafar »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #93
somenameforme wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Korea has a far crazier history [1] than I think most realize. This [2] is the first president of South Korea, installed by the US, and then eventually ferried off into exile in Hawaii by the US after a revolution, leading the 2nd Republic of Korea. That was followed by coups and all other sorts of great things, including 4 acting presidents that did not serve more than 50 days a piece, eventually leading to th…

And they are facing the demographic cliff of demographic cliffs... Although what I suspect will happen is that North Korea will fall apart eventually and South Korea will get a demographic surge from immigrating North Koreans.

Will China allow NK to fall apart?

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#97

Post by achenet »

stephen_g wrote: post #74
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…

Yes, this is called a ‘natural monopoly’. It’s the case with most infrastructure - basically there is little incentive for a private company to be more efficient than a public utility, since anybody building competing infrastructure is infeasible, but because they want to make profit there is incentive for them to charge more and to cut costs in other ways (like not investing in more than the bare minimum of maintena…

It's like people who support drug prohibition... ample evidence that something doesn't work won't stop people believing it.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#98

Post by lazydonkey456 »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #46
lazydonkey456 wrote: post #17

MITM by ISP and the government! Even SK constitution said it is illegal. but they don't give a damn about it. They are scanning SNI field and manipulate packet to prevent user visit certain sites.

> Even SK constitution said it is illegal. but they don't give a damn about it. This is a popular meme that is also not entirely correct. I should stress that this incident is very different from the usual MITM from ISP and government though. I assumed you are talking about the general MITM because you mentioned SNI (because you can't put malwares with just SNI sniffing). The constitution only says about the "privacy…

So pornography threats national security? I don't think so. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#99

Post by Affric »

quanto wrote: post #60

South Korea information technology (as distinguished from hardware-related technology) is unbelievably bad. Much of it is purely technical: domestic firms like Naver are simply not as good as global incumbents like Google, but also they are terrible compared to other regional players (The Kakao chat app is vastly inferior to Zalo, a Vietnamese chat app). However, just as much is due to poor cultural and interpersonal…

lol, that is a scam though

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#100

Post by lifthrasiir »

lazydonkey456 wrote: post #98
lifthrasiir wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even SK constitution said it is illegal. but they don't give a damn about it. This is a popular meme that is also not entirely correct. I should stress that this incident is very different from the usual MITM from ISP and government though. I assumed you are talking about the general MITM because you mentioned SNI (because you can't put malwares with just SNI sniffing). The constitution only says about the "privacy…

So pornography threats national security? I don't think so. "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

Even NK advocacy sites do not threat national security either, but I meant that such restriction is allowed by the law which was ultimately passed the Congress and so you are wrong to claim that it's "illegal". See also my other comment for the background.

Also the watchmen argument against such restrictions is so old at this point that there are lots of counterpoints available for you, if you wish.

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