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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

#231

Post by anigbrowl »

anigbrowl wrote: post #112
clouddrover wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The NSA was never given the mission to take on that defensive role you state. It's both. James Clapper ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Clapper ), former director of national intelligence, says the NSA has a review process to decide whether or not to disclose vulnerabilities to software vendors. Nothing in their mission prevents them from doing it. They're choosing not to do it. Look at the slogan on the NSA's…

Strategically there is sometimes advantage in not letting the enemy know what you know (how you define enemy is another question, but it's reasonable to observe that we have antagonistic relationships with some countries). The alternative is a siege mentality. If you systematically throw up defences ASAP every time you discover a vulnerability, and an enemy discovers a vulnerability but does observe any defensive pre…

I just noticed that the last sentence in the first paragraph above should read "but does not observe any defensive preparations". sorry about that.

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

#232

Post by sametmax »

ForHackernews wrote: post #212
sametmax wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For that you need intellectuals, and the NK systems killed most of them, and is not tuned to produce new ones. It's very hard to destroy criticism and grow people who can think.

What make you think you need intellectuals to develop technical exploits?

Because it requires a brain. A drone can't do it.

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

#233

Post by nwah1 »

ozo wrote: post #165
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…

>that only a domain expert with highly specialized experience Correct me if I'm wrong, but WannaCry isn't highly sophisticated. It weaponizes already known vulnerabilities to exploit soft targets on a large, but unsophisticated scale (because most of the victims are soft targets in terms of computer/network security). Ransomware is not a new idea either. Combining these things (known exploits, soft targets, ransomwar…

True. And if we want to get conspiratorial, we should just blame all the viruses on Symantec.

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

#234

Post by nthcolumn »

openasocket wrote: post #21

OK, so I know this is going to come up in the comments, but this is not remotely a baseless allegation. The Lazarus group (one of the names for the DPRK-associated APT group) is somewhat well known and is quite sophisticated. This is the same group that hacked Sony a few years back. And to preempt people who are going to chime in with "Sony was just some insider leaking data" there is extensive evidence showing it wa…

So this 'quite sophisticated' group suddenly became completely inept. Who the hell do NSA take us for? There are no specifics just copypasta and diversion. Oh yeah this thread is full of it. Consensus! BS more like. pure, unadulterated, prairie fresh by the shit-ton.

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

#235

Post by sangnoir »

sametmax wrote: post #180
finolex1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your skepticism as well, but I wouldn't be too dismissive of North Korean Cyber capabilities either. They do have a specialized cyber warfare unit, handpick and train their soldiers extremely intensively ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/02/north-kor... ). Their performances in other international competitions, like the International Math Olympiad ( https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.…

For that you need intellectuals, and the NK systems killed most of them, and is not tuned to produce new ones. It's very hard to destroy criticism and grow people who can think.

To me 'intellectual' conjures an image of highfalutin college academics - that sort of rigor has not been linked to offensive security, historically. If a rag-tag group like Anon or curious but intelligent teenagers can exploit systems, so can a North Korean cyber-division. If you are suggesting that intelligence has been purged out of the North Korean gene pool, I have a bell-curve to show you.

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

#236

Post by somecontext »

pulse7 wrote: post #188
finolex1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your skepticism as well, but I wouldn't be too dismissive of North Korean Cyber capabilities either. They do have a specialized cyber warfare unit, handpick and train their soldiers extremely intensively ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/02/north-kor... ). Their performances in other international competitions, like the International Math Olympiad ( https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.…

Regarding "Their performances in ... International Math Olympiad": they were disqualified many times. I was at IMO in Istanbul in 1993 and they were disqualified, becuase they cheated (their official translator provided them solutions to the problems and it was discovered). So it may be possible that these "performances" don't indicate any such ability...

For some context, it is relatively easy to cheat at the IMO if a team wants to do so. See for example this thread: https://www.quora.com/How-did-North-Korea-cheat-in-the-IMO-i...

It is my understanding that plenty of people do not believe North Korea cheated in 2010 (and also, plenty of people believe that other specific teams have cheated in specific years). Furthermore, it is my understanding that the North Korean team leader in recent years has not seen the problems before the contest (relying instead on the South Korean translation of the problems), thus removing the most obvious mechanism of cheating. Unfortunately, I do not know of a public source of this information and accordingly I have not verified it myself.

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

#237

Post by hellbanner »

artursapek wrote: post #39
tuna-piano wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. Isn't the point of bitcoin that it doesn't need a central authority? If Bitcoin has evolved to the point where you need to have currency exchanges that act just like banks... what's the point?

It is more accurate to say that the point of Bitcoin is everyone has perfect information about how much money everyone has and who they transact with. The hackers are free to send the stolen money to someone else with no central authority to stop them, but an exchange is likely to reject that because they deal with fiat and therefore have to meet certain legal and ethical standards. The hackers can still spend the mo…

"likely to reject" -- I haven't seen any history of exchanges stopping specific withdrawals for certain coins.

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

#238

Post by nv-vn »

misja111 wrote: post #172
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…

It's good to have some skepticism, but I wouldn't underestimate North Korea's technical capabilities. After all they have been able to build an atom bomb, that's an accomplishment that is far more complicated than writing a computer worm.

It's not that they wouldn't be able to. It's that proving it was them is damn near impossible. The claim that it's DEFINITELY THEM is just so hard to put any real substance behind that it just appears to be fictitious. The amount of proof that you could find in a single binary is very limited, and even that stuff could be faked on purpose. To say that it must, 100%, without a doubt, be of North Korean origin is about as foolproof as any other conspiracy theory.

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

#239

Post by sctb »

gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #191
gjjrfcbugxbhf wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DISCLAIMER: I worked with the people who wrote that report In other words trust us we are sooo much smarter than you mere plebs...

The op made a bunch of assertions provided a reference which refuted one of her assertions and then appealed to authority...

The guidelines that ask us to comment civilly always apply, no matter what you're replying to.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#240

Post by finolex1 »

rand77763 wrote: post #181
finolex1 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your skepticism as well, but I wouldn't be too dismissive of North Korean Cyber capabilities either. They do have a specialized cyber warfare unit, handpick and train their soldiers extremely intensively ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/02/north-kor... ). Their performances in other international competitions, like the International Math Olympiad ( https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.…

What exactly does a math competition have to do with ransomware?

It doesn't directly, but it indicates that the nation has an ability to create a pipeline to identify and train talented students for a high-performance intellectual pursuit if they wish to.
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