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Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

nytimes.com

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Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#41

Post by logfromblammo »

ForHackernews wrote: post #25
luftderfreiheit wrote: post #12

What fascinating times we live in. My interpretation of the general history of warfare is that countries agree on restraint once some situation has occurred that all sides agree should never happen again. Mustard gas in WWI, nuclear weapons in WWII... Hopefully this doesn't spiral out of control. It's not clear where the boundaries are that we don't want to cross.

I'd be pretty happy if governments all decided "cyberwarfare" was an acceptable substitute for the real thing. Nobody dies, some money is lost, some important people are embarrassed.

Cyberwarfare can do a lot more than DDoS a router. Haven't you ever read the articles that pop up from time to time about Internet scans that find machines which should in no way ever be connected to the Internet, or even in the same room with a machine connected to the Internet? And then they try to log into those machines using the manufacturer's default passwords....

In short, critical infrastructure all over the world is being needlessly put at risk. The operators are placing their own knives across their own throats, and all a network-based attacker would need to do is jog a few elbows.

A few people might die. It's not like anybody is putting kill-bots out there, connected to the Internet, with an easily-toggled BERSERK_RAMPAGE flag (yet), but I think water treatment plants and electrical power grids are probably vulnerable to attack, and could cause some folks at the margins to die.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#42

Post by lostgame »

Okay, seriously - who else is making the weird, kinda unsettling connection between the recent seizure of the Pirate Bay and this whole 'The Interview' business with North Korea?

If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already?

Is the seizure of The Pirate Bay linked to the intentional suppression of the release of this film?

Why would the government raiding TPB concede to do this for terrorists?

I mean, I hate to be one of those conspiracy nuts, but - it really seems like this is all a big distraction for the start of some new strange form of cyberterrorism.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#43

Post by downandout »

chriswarbo wrote: post #39
downandout wrote: post #7

I suspect this to be the work of the US government, but out of curiosity I wonder if there would be any legal consequences were Sony or another private party to launch a DDOS attack on North Korea from the US. Obviously no one would be extradited to NK, but I'm curious if that would run afoul of US law. If not, it might be fun to create some software or a mobile app that would keep this going indefinitely. I imagine…

> I wonder if there would be any legal consequences were Sony or another private party to launch a DDOS attack on North Korea from the US. Obviously no one would be extradited to NK, but I'm curious if that would run afoul of US law. We could consider an analogy: would Sony run afoul of US (or international) law if they knocked North Korea offline by launching highly-targetted ballistic missiles from their US offices…

>would Sony run afoul of US (or international) law if they knocked North Korea offline by launching highly-targetted ballistic missiles from their US offices?

That isn't remotely close to an analogy. Mere possession of explosive devices, or even the materials to make them, is a crime in the US. However, it isn't clear if attacking a remote network is a crime under US law. Normally it would be up to the victim country to prosecute and request extradition, but there would be no extradition from the US or any other country (except perhaps from China, one of NK's few allies) in this case.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#44

Post by Dublum »

lostgame wrote: post #42

Okay, seriously - who else is making the weird, kinda unsettling connection between the recent seizure of the Pirate Bay and this whole 'The Interview' business with North Korea? If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already? Is the seizure of The Pirate Bay linked to the intentional suppression of the release of this film? Why would the government raiding TPB concede to do this for te…

Except TPB doesn't actually host the leak, all they do is index the .torrent files, so if it's going to leak, it'll leak, and another tracker will have a link to it. The takedown and the DDoS came pretty close to each other, but it's important to remember that TPB gets taken down every year or two, it's just the cost of doing business with them. I don't see compelling evidence for correlation

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#45

Post by dopamean »

lostgame wrote: post #42

Okay, seriously - who else is making the weird, kinda unsettling connection between the recent seizure of the Pirate Bay and this whole 'The Interview' business with North Korea? If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already? Is the seizure of The Pirate Bay linked to the intentional suppression of the release of this film? Why would the government raiding TPB concede to do this for te…

You don't need TPB to distribute something via bittorrent.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#46

Post by TrainedMonkey »

lostgame wrote: post #42

Okay, seriously - who else is making the weird, kinda unsettling connection between the recent seizure of the Pirate Bay and this whole 'The Interview' business with North Korea? If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already? Is the seizure of The Pirate Bay linked to the intentional suppression of the release of this film? Why would the government raiding TPB concede to do this for te…

"If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already?"

No, the Pirate Bay is largest and most visible torrent sharing site, but by no means the only one. If anyone wanted to leak Interview there are plenty of options.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#47

Post by BorisMelnik »

yourad_io wrote: post #40

Trying to inform oneself about a technical matter through a mainstream news source is an exercise in frustration. Maybe my English needs work. Could someone with superior English skills to mine, please decipher the article and tell me: Is there any actual evidence of an attack? Has traffic spiked through/from NK? Or could this be them "pulling the plug"? Because the first case is: "Someone attacked NK Internet and br…

as far as I can tell (from one read of the post) the internet is down. I did not see any sort of quote from a network security analyst from a neutral party analyzing packets or saying it was a DDoS.

It is not the style of DPNK for them to pull the plug, that would make them appear weak to the outside world when in fact they did invent the internet and have superior everything on everything.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#48

Post by pera »

spacefight wrote: post #6
Alupis wrote: post #3

This is occurring after the hacker group who claimed the attack (Guardians of Peace), sent the FBI a letter thanking them for blaming North Korea, calling the FBI the best (sic), and linked to a youtube video that called the FBI "an idiot".[1] [1] http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/22/world/asia/north-korea-us-sony...

That video is ages old. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiRacdl02w4

uhm I think that's a very old (2004?) flash from 2ch

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#49

Post by at-fates-hands »

luftderfreiheit wrote: post #12

What fascinating times we live in. My interpretation of the general history of warfare is that countries agree on restraint once some situation has occurred that all sides agree should never happen again. Mustard gas in WWI, nuclear weapons in WWII... Hopefully this doesn't spiral out of control. It's not clear where the boundaries are that we don't want to cross.

>>> Hopefully this doesn't spiral out of control. It's not clear where the boundaries are that we don't want to cross.

It's been spiraling out of control for years.

I'm actually quite surprised at how restrained our government has been to actually engage some of these rogue countries after decades of ongoing attacks.

At some point, you have to return fire.

And yes, I'm quite aware the US has been active in several high profile attacks. Unfortunately, it pales in comparison to what China, DPRK, and several middle eastern countries have been engaged in for much longer.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#50

Post by fleitz »

lostgame wrote: post #42

Okay, seriously - who else is making the weird, kinda unsettling connection between the recent seizure of the Pirate Bay and this whole 'The Interview' business with North Korea? If the Pirate Bay was still online, would 'The Interview' have leaked already? Is the seizure of The Pirate Bay linked to the intentional suppression of the release of this film? Why would the government raiding TPB concede to do this for te…

Public BT is the last stop for movies. They appear on IRC/Usenet before BT.

Also, TPB is far from the only torrent indexing site.

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