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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

#101

Post by autoexec »

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…

> the great American past time is complaining about the government. But in SK there's a lot more trust of the government

Are they really more trusting of the government in south korea or is that just what people will say if you ask them?

If my government aggressively went after every youtuber and literal child who dared to say bad things about the government I'd probably lie and say I trusted my government too whenever asked.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#102

Post by autoexec »

actionfromafar wrote: post #96
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Would it be worth it for China to prop them up? I get that they're communism buddies or whatever, but what does China get out of it? What does China really need from North Korea?

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#103

Post by antonvs »

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…

> If this happened in the US

Perhaps this would be a good moment to pause and ask yourself why this hasn’t happened in the US.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#104

Post by monkfish328 »

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…

Wow I've always heard that South Korean internet is supposed to be one of the fastest in the world? How did that go wrong?

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#105

Post by esjeon »

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

I’m pretty sure it’s not literally BitTorrent, but a distorted version of it to build private paid peer-to-peer networks.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#106

Post by skhr0680 »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #91
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…

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 po…

I don’t think it’s a stretch to argue that porn is “de facto” illegal in South Korea

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#107

Post by XorNot »

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…

I think this is sort of how Japan is often thought of as "land of the future" because where was a brief period around the 2000s where new tech adoption sort of got a little ahead of the US, but what people really missed was that they weren't ahead so much as just...kind of different?

And the reality today is that it'll seem practically backwards to a Westerner - i.e. tons of paper forms and bureaucracy for things like banking and rental applications.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#108

Post by h4kor »

monkfish328 wrote: post #104
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…

Wow I've always heard that South Korean internet is supposed to be one of the fastest in the world? How did that go wrong?

Policy failure. South Korea enforced a "Sender Pays" rule for networks, eliminating peering between ISPs. This resulted in companies moving there server to neighboring countries to avoid paying for traffic, which was free before.

More details: https://www.internetsociety.org/resources/internet-fragmenta...

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#109

Post by skhr0680 »

autoexec wrote: post #102
actionfromafar wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will China allow NK to fall apart?

Would it be worth it for China to prop them up? I get that they're communism buddies or whatever, but what does China get out of it? What does China really need from North Korea?

From the Chinese and Russian (Soviet) perspective, letting a few Koreans get oppressed is worth it considering the alternative, a land border with the US
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