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The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

#221

Post by pavpanchekha »

rsync wrote: post #129

The only rational response to this is deep, deep skepticism. In the old days of the USSR, while very difficult, it was at least conceivable that you could just fly to moscow and see if they were eating their children there or burning priests or god knows whatever else. There was a natural limit to the deception that could occur and further a normal person could make conclusions about the things they saw with their ow…

Friends of mine have been to North Korea, one of them to teach for a quarter at PUST (so not as a tourist). By their telling, even with a constant military guard, it is about as poor as we've been told. Of course, my friend did not see slave labor or criminal camps, but then flying to Moscow wouldn't let you tour gulags either. Some Americans do "tour" the North Korean prison system, just like with the Soviet one back in the day, and their experiences seem similar. Seems unlikely that they eat children, though, and I'm not sure I've heard anything about priest burnings their, though of course religion is mostly banned. This is of course a personal take and using sources you don't have access to—so use however much salt you feel necessary—but it seems that most assessments of life inside North Korea by international organizations are pretty on-the-mark.

Re: The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

#224

Post by cmurf »

rsync wrote: post #129

The only rational response to this is deep, deep skepticism. In the old days of the USSR, while very difficult, it was at least conceivable that you could just fly to moscow and see if they were eating their children there or burning priests or god knows whatever else. There was a natural limit to the deception that could occur and further a normal person could make conclusions about the things they saw with their ow…

> The only rational response to this is deep, deep skepticism.

Do you apply the same statement to all world religions? At least that would be consistent, but it is also starting out of the gate with a very hefty dose of hubris.

It is more reasonable to respond to the article as, just some for-profit paper's entertainment piece. It's reasonable to assert that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. It's reasonable to criticize the U.S. government for an excess of secrecy, an overuse of classification.

In 1959 the DoD had 12 meter resolution spy satellites. And 0.6 meter resolution spy satellites by the early 1980's. Those captures were never released nor leaked to the public contemporaneously, it would be decades before it was declassified and released.

But let's take your "only rational response" is skepticism, and apply binary logic to the outcomes just to keep it simple: you believe the report is 100% true, you believe the report is 100% false. Let's take the false case. That necessarily commits you to the NSA being either incompetent or malevolent. If the NSA, with its vast resources, is engaging in either gross negligence or is malevolent, that means contemplation of the higher likelihood of deaths of millions: negligence or malevolence does not reduce the risk of death, for sure. And now you're confronted with rebel's dilemma as NSA is a domestic threat.

What you do by saying the only rational response is skepticism, is commit yourself, morally and ethically, to arriving at certainty. Not hand waving that the burden is on others. You just placed the burden on yourself.

Re: The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

#226

Post by BearGoesChirp »

Buge wrote: post #135
elevensies wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, I don't doubt that the NSA has the ability to attribute an attack to an attacker. What I doubt is that the NSA has the ability to tell the truth in public.

You are correct that it seems the NSA is unable to tell the truth to the public. The NSA never stated publicly that WannaCry is from North Korea. >The NSA declined to comment.

The NSA having the information leaked is more beneficial than saying it directly. If at any point something shows it clearly wasn't North Korea, the NSA can claim they have made not official statements and the leak was using bad information. But if such information doesn't come out, then we get what we currently have, which is the public having been informed that North Korea is responsible. What more could the NSA have asked for? Well maybe North Korea directly claiming responsibility, but besides for that.

Re: The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

#227

Post by crowbahr »

rf15 wrote: post #209
pulse7 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are skilled in math, you will be better/faster in programming anything - including ransomware...

This is an incredible oversimplification(at best) which does not hold as-is. I know enough math people who are ABYSMAL at coding due to the differences between domains and the constraints that shaped their way of thinking, and a lot of linguists who are surprisingly good at it due to just that.

Italian major CS minor here: Not good at math (working on it) but good at programming (full time salaried job with good pay doesn't mean I'm good at it but it'd about the only credential I have) (also working on it).

I dismissed programming as a freshman because I was so bad at math in high school. Turns out my high school teachers were very bad teachers (shocking when they're paid so little, who would've thought? ) I learned Italian fluently, spent a few years overseas immersing myself in it, came home and had a rough time finding my passion. Took a gap year and messed about with some online coding classes (code academy) and realized I loved it. It felt like a new language that instead of being expressively emotional it was a way to express logic and rules. I like logic and rules.

So I completed the minor +4 higher level classes and taught myself mobile development. No regrets... Besides not going into it as a major maybe.

Re: The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

#228

Post by ryanlol »

dx034 wrote: post #184
discordance wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in volumes that count

$100k over a few weeks and exchanges shouldn't be too noticeable. Especially if you use personnel from several embassies.

$100k in a single trade would not be noticeable.

I'd go with more like $10M over a few weeks.

Re: The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

#229

Post by blfr »

mobilethrow wrote: post #217
blfr wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did anti-Soviet propaganda "take wrong"? Even after reading Bukowski, Solzhenitsyn, and the Black Book of Communism, I find it hard to imagine an atrocity which communists didn't commit. And not as isolated incident of abuse of power, usually on a mass scale. They liked their genocides like they liked their mines and factories -- huge. Not to mention the economic system of constant shortages where you had to bri…

> Bukowski For others who are confused about this, they probably mean: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Bukovsky ...and not the famous Hollywood drunkard known as Charles Bukowski.

Yes, definitely Bukowski the dissident. Although I would highly recommend both And the Wind Returns... and Factotum.

There is this very telling scene in And the Wind Returns... where people peruse Lenin's works on the toilet (to then use as toilet paper because there was a shortage of course) and afterwards discuss what they read. It leads to never-ending arguments because the collected Lenin's writings were so contradictory, everyone found something different.

Re: The NSA has linked the WannaCry computer worm to North Korea

#230

Post by anigbrowl »

abecedarius wrote: post #134
anigbrowl wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's it then, one lie ends everything. I had a program crash on me once, never used it again. I'm being flippant but while I wouldn't advise you to trust the NSA it's equally foolish to assume an antagonistic posture towards it forever more in everything. Military forces sometimes kill innocent people which is terrible, and even worse than lying, but you don't see any country deciding not to have one, for reas…

When a known liar says X, it means they've calculated that saying X is a good move in whatever game they're playing. This tells us little about whether X is the case. I mean, if they've since made a credible effort to restore their reputation somehow, we may start to give their pronouncements some direct weight in our own models of the world, but until then, why would you? This is beside any matter of morality.

Because it would be irrational to assume that they lie all the time. You are right that they've calculated it to be a good move, but good moves are not universally applicable.

You should definitely give lower weight to the statements of an actor with a record of being untruthful - we could get into discussing how Clapper is no longer at the NSA and that equating the NSA with his statements to Congress is a fallacy of composition, but let's go with the idea that the NSA as an institution is rather untrustworthy. What I'm arguing against is reflexively reducing that weight to zero, which I claim is irrational.

Morality is something that is important in decision-making, but extremely distracting in analysis, so I ignore it when trying to figure out what people are doing or whether they're truthful.

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