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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

#131

Post by linearrust »

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…

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

Good. Why should any country be a conduit for porn? Most sane countries frown upon and limit things like porn, gambling, drugs, etc. Like we used to until fairly recently.

> They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials[0]

It's like that in most countries. Other countries can have their own values. Nothing wrong with it.

> 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].

Freedomhouse is apparently a state propaganda outfit.

'Most of the organization's funding comes from the U.S. State Department[4] and other government grants.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House

You are linking to a propaganda site created solely to push a political agenda. Germany has an amazing 'freedom' scores but you could go to jail in germany for espousing certain beliefs about certain events in ww2.

That south korea scores low in the freedomhouse index is a good thing. Though it is surprising given that south korea is a militarily occupied vassal of the US.

> It's pretty interesting when coming from the west where all the problems are often spoken about in the open.

Are they really? You are conflating 'the west' with the US. Most of 'the west' is not like america. In most of the west, you can go to jail or be punished for speech. Most of the west doesn't have free speech that we do in america.

What's with the neverending 'coming from the west' from foreigners here? So many foreigners here pretend to be americans here? Why?

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#132

Post by BillTthree »

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…

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/chinese-hackers-charged-in-...

It took 3 years but the FBI published the names of the fellows they believe are responsible for breaching equifax and stealing private data about half of americans

Wu Zhiyong, Wang Qian, Xu Ke, and Liu Lei

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#133

Post by BiteCode_dev »

linearrust wrote: post #131
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…

> Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. Good. Why should any country be a conduit for porn? Most sane countries frown upon and limit things like porn, gambling, drugs, etc. Like we used to until fairly recently. > They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials[0] It's like that in most countries. Other countries ca…

> In most of the west, you can go to jail or be punished for speech. Most of the west doesn't have free speech that we do in america.

I'm going to assume you don't travel much cause on our side of the pound we can very much speak out loud of many things the US can't.

In fact, we don't have the absurd taboos that force the US to use alternative words. We can:

- Report "He disrespected his colleague, calling him a niger". No need to hide that behind "the n-word".

- We can call pedophilia what it is and debate about how to punish it, instead of using acronyms like CSAM for fear of being labeled in a certain way.

- We can show tits or talk about vagina and not get "porn" tagged all over.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#134

Post by BillTthree »

poikroequ wrote: post #54

The title is very clickbaity. These are not users downloading torrents in the normal sense. It's users that are using a specific piece of software that happens to utilize the BitTorrent protocol.

There is an enormous issue here. A service provider committed crimes against customers and their justification is the customers were using a protocol to exchange something. The service provider has no idea what the something exchanged was.

It's similar to arresting someone because they are speaking French. I don't speak French and I don't like people who speak French because sometimes French people say stuff I don't agree with. I don't know what they're saying but I hate it.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#135

Post by linearrust »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #133
linearrust wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. Good. Why should any country be a conduit for porn? Most sane countries frown upon and limit things like porn, gambling, drugs, etc. Like we used to until fairly recently. > They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials[0] It's like that in most countries. Other countries ca…

> In most of the west, you can go to jail or be punished for speech. Most of the west doesn't have free speech that we do in america. I'm going to assume you don't travel much cause on our side of the pound we can very much speak out loud of many things the US can't. In fact, we don't have the absurd taboos that force the US to use alternative words. We can: - Report "He disrespected his colleague, calling him a nige…

> I'm going to assume you don't travel much cause on our side of the pound we can very much speak out loud of many things the US can't.

Pound? What country are you from? Why are people so sneaky? Hiding behind 'the west'.

> In fact, we don't have the absurd taboos that force the US to use alternative words.

What? None of what you wrote applies to the US and none of it has anything to do with free speech. It applies to woke social media. What does 'porn tag' have to do with free speech? Besides, my point was being jailed or punished by the government.

> We can:

Question the holocaust without going to jail?

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#136

Post by LightBug1 »

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

Forgive me, one time: LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#137

Post by krageon »

XorNot wrote: post #107
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…

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 lik…

On an infrastructure level Japan is literally not even in the same reality as the US. The infrastructure works, everything is clean and works, the toilets are usable and good. The mobile internet infrastructure is honestly fine and most likely better than what you'd be able to get in the US (especially as a foreigner).

It will not seem backwards to a "Westerner" today. The only place where you'd really encounter forms as a human being is in government interactions (and possibly banking), which is not unusual or even particularly backwards.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#138

Post by kfarr »

black_puppydog wrote: post #124
antonvs wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

Definitely not the same but I remember late in the days of Napster there were companies that would upload "poisoned" mp3's of popular artist that were not the actual song requested to thwart piracy.

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#139

Post by [deleted] »

linearrust wrote: post #131
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…

> Distribution of porn is illegal there and they do their best to block it from outside. Good. Why should any country be a conduit for porn? Most sane countries frown upon and limit things like porn, gambling, drugs, etc. Like we used to until fairly recently. > They are pretty big on cyber defamation and will go after people who make fun of government officials[0] It's like that in most countries. Other countries ca…

[deleted]

Re: South Korean telecom company attacks torrent users with malware

#140

Post by sixothree »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #84
localfirst wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In early 2000s I used those Korean SIN number generators to access mmorpgs I stopped when my cousin told me it was illegal Have a lot of fond memories when there was a mini mmorpg bubble in korea N-age still going strong it seems in 2024 ! So many rare unique korean mmorpg that will never see the light of the day!

I actually played one of those Korean mmorpgs that that an English version available ~2005 and I remember their website being a mess. It got wildly popular in the west to a point where the server started lagging and was down frequently, so they set up a second one. Then the cheating got out of hand so they added some anti-cheat software, and shortly after they wanted people to verify their identity by sending a scan…

Honestly I think the only way to get rid of cheating in online games is to use some form of identity vetting.

I know of one place where there is zero spam and it’s because of the identity vetting infrastructure.

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