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N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

nytimes.com

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Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#131

Post by jklinger410 »

1stop wrote: post #112
chroma wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's a scary argument. That's why I was careful in how I put it forth. The problem is that many skills are dual-use. At some point, a threshold is reached where a student is more likely to use the knowledge to harm than to help. This threshold depends on the skill and the student. To use a hypothetical: Would you condone someone teaching particle physics in North Korea? How about biology? Chemistry? Turb…

You aren't exhibiting a finally tuned sense of ethics. Exactly which ethical principle(s) are you following? This seems like a 5 minutes of thought kind of solution to an incredibly complex problem. North Korea can buy/steal/grow the knowledge they need. They already have nukes, and are working on missiles. I think the notion that we should sanction education (on top of the existing sanctions) is just playing by the…

>I think the notion that we should sanction education (on top of the existing sanctions) is just playing by the already broken playbook we (the rest of the world) have been to date. We are feeding their propaganda machine on how evil we are.

We are not obligated in any way to provide education to North Korea. Saying we are "evil" for not educating another country is quite a stretch.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#132

Post by shutupalready »

donohoe wrote: post #127
shutupalready wrote: post #117

> General Clapper praised the food; his hosts later presented him with a bill for his share of the meal. Not only are they evil, but they're cheap too. But the fact is that the hosts would have billed for the meal because the U.S. government asked to be billed. The USG requires that officials traveling on business not accept gratuities, gifts, dinners, or anything above a certain value (which is about US$100 -- it ge…

they can't get that little thing right, it makes me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the article. Given they got a small detail correct like the persons present was Gen. Clapper inclined me to trust the accuracy of the rest of the article. Same logic?

No it's not the same logic.

If a 1000-word article had 50 misspelled words, would you then say that it was a pretty accurate because it was 95% correctly spelled?

No, you'd be horrified. Things like spelling, grammar, and basic facts (the capital of a country, USG policy on gifts, etc.) should be close to 100% correct. That's a lower bound to be taken seriously.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#133

Post by lotsofmangos »

donohoe wrote: post #127
shutupalready wrote: post #117

> General Clapper praised the food; his hosts later presented him with a bill for his share of the meal. Not only are they evil, but they're cheap too. But the fact is that the hosts would have billed for the meal because the U.S. government asked to be billed. The USG requires that officials traveling on business not accept gratuities, gifts, dinners, or anything above a certain value (which is about US$100 -- it ge…

they can't get that little thing right, it makes me wonder about the accuracy of the rest of the article. Given they got a small detail correct like the persons present was Gen. Clapper inclined me to trust the accuracy of the rest of the article. Same logic?

If I find that the brakes are working only on one side of a car, I don't consider the fact that some of the brakes are working, to be an indicator that the car is probably in good condition.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#134

Post by nemo »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #106
realusername wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is saying that North Korea is a bloody dictatorship where people are starving to death. Medias, scientists, tourists who were there (yes, you can actually go there), geopoliticians, ... There is just some evidence everywhere. There is no conspiracy about North Korea and this has nothing to do with capitalism. They have giant statues of their leader and a massive painting of him in the most prestigious place…

>> "They have giant statues of their leader and a massive painting of him in the most prestigious place of the country." I'm sorry. I agree NK is a horrible place but that reasoning is ridiculous. Every heard of the Lincoln Memorial [0] or the Lansdowne portrait [1]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Memorial [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne_portrait Edit: Just realised you may have been using sarcas…

I am pretty sure they were mentioning that in the sense that North Korea has a full blown cult of personality around their leader (who is an unelected life-long dictator).

You'll note that there isn't a giant statue of Obama on the White House lawn and in every town square. In N. Korea this is the case.

Adult Americans are not legally required to wear lapel pins featuring prominent past presidents, nor are they required to have images of those presidents in their homes with nothing else permitted on the wall that hosts those images, while in N. Korea they must.

Americans can freely speak a poor opinion of Obama or the Congress or the SCOTUS and not fear that they and their family will be imprisoned and tortured, unlike N. Korea.

The press can say what they like about Obama/other branches of the government without fear of censorship and imprisonment, unlike N. Korea where there is only state-run media that fawn over their leader.

I think that was what they were trying to get at even if they didn't fully expand it.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#135

Post by csandreasen »

sandworm wrote: post #68
redstripe wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting the NSA should be a government funded QA department for large corps and open source? For commercial software the companies who are not finding these bugs on their own are to blame. For open source, the cheapskates who mooch free software without contributing are too blame.

Yes and no. They are tasked with protecting national security assets within the US, most of which rely on commercial systems. When they find a dangerous flaw in those systems, especially one loose in the wild, they are to help fix it. To not fix it is to leave US systems at risk. "in almost all instances, for widely used code, it is in the national interest to eliminate software vulnerabilities rather than to use the…

Not all 0-days affect national security assets. Heck, I'm sure there's plenty of software out in the world that isn't even used in the US at all.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#136

Post by cmdkeen »

1stop wrote: post #114
cmdkeen wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given it spends around a third of its GDP on military activities, and is a thoroughly planned economy it seems a relatively straightforward inference to make.

Lets quote % of GDP when talking about a country with negligible GDP... honest! If what you say is true: DPRK spends $3 billion (approx) on military. It's neighbours spend the following: China: $150 billion (approx) South Korea: $33 billion (approx) Japan: $50 billion (approx) Lets not forget that South Korea and Japan are satellites for the US, and a conflict would involve them: $640 billion (approx). So their spend…

Yes but the discussion was about whether you could assume a DPRK computer science grad would go into military (or associated work). Using military spending as a % of GDP as a rough yardstick does suggest that the number of DPRK citizens involved in military activity is very high.

Especially as each comp sci grad probably has greater potential to contribute to GDP than say your average farm labourer.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#138

Post by enlightenedfool »

finid wrote: post #122

So we hacked them first, now we've imposed a sanction on them for hacking one of our companies. Unbelievable!

We can have nukes. You can't. We can violate human rights. You can't. We can kill your people. You can't kill ours. It's an accepted pattern.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#139

Post by coldtea »

happyscrappy wrote: post #123
coldtea wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the US didn't have much issue with European fascism in Spain, or with supporting fascism in Chile and otherwhere in Lat. Am., not to mention the horrendous state that Saudi Arabia is...

It is foolhardy to defend North Korea so the only option to argue is that America is bad too, but what you are arguing is the way of the world. If the US thought they could play NK against China they certainly would.

Well, I don't like the way of the world.

And I believe that a bad country that doesn't fuck with your country is better than a bad country that fucks with mine and most countries.

Re: N.S.A. Tapped into North Korean Networks Before Sony Attack, Officials Say

#140

Post by wheezy »

gambiting wrote: post #125
kimjonsegfault wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

North Korea is not a fascist or nationalistic regime. And it's only been turned into a concentration camp by the West through sanctions. It's not even any more antithesis to democracy either. The party members are elected. The institution members are promoted by performance like anywhere else. The 'supreme leader' being some sort of a Sauron is a fantasy. Since you're comparing to Nazi Germany, you should also know t…

Sure. My country(Poland) used to be communist for nearly 50 years, and you know what we called ourselves? Democratic Republic of Poland, just like North Korea calls itself democratic. There were elections, party members were elected - but it was all corrupt through and through. The same party would win with 99.9% of the votes, party members were chosen by who gave the largest bribe or who was closest family member. A…

I love how american and european chauvinism continues to conquer reason in the 21th century. Why mention Africa when most of the world's malnourished people are in Asia? With the great variance that can occur on a continent why mention continents at all? If one must it is irresponsible to omit that both continents were forced into producing cash crops for export to Western Europe.

Does that mean that the Western European models of governance work? Duh!

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