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Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

nytimes.com

31–40 of 205 posts

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#31
post #19

Do people seriously think the USG is behind a ddos when Anonymous has already stated they are going to go after the DRPK? http://www.inquisitr.com/1691688/anonymous-announces-vengean...

i don't know if they have the capabilities to wage a war on two fronts. They're getting ready to crush Iggy Azalea as best as I can tell.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#32
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect this to be the work of the US government If true, the backlash could be significant. There's already large portions of the world trying to de-centralize the internet from the US (routing around, etc) after the Snowden leaks and discoveries of egregious abuses of power over the internet by the US government. No single country should have the capability (or right) to knock an entire other country off the in…

I think you don't understand how powerful the US military really is. We take down governments in our sleep and replace them with our own puppets.

We take down governments in our sleep and replace them with our own puppets.

Except for the fact that the Chinese protect that particular government, and that makes thing a lot stickier.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#33

Of course, NK won't be pissed at all and they're not going to retaliate at all (yeah I know it's probably the goal of this attack). This might be the first steps of the first cyber world war for all I know. The only good thing is that only the elite will be affected by the collapse of NK Internet (no porn for a while). The average citizen probably can't even grasp what the net is, and none of her life is linked to it…

Yes can it really be the first cyber war if one side doesn't really have a cyber presence?

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#34

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.

some important people are embarrassed.

Which is pretty much exactly why it won't happen.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#35

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.

As others have pointed out, it's unclear that the US government is itself involved. Neither the attacks on Sony and the attacks on the North Korean internet links require uniquely state-owned military resources. They just require a relatively accessible set of knowledge, skills, and practical tools. We even get the term "script kiddies" from the long-running case of those with knowledge and skills creating tools that encapsulate same.

So what happens in a world where "warfare" level activities, causing significant disruption to nations and multinational corporations, are accessible to essentially random individuals? In the U.S. we might liken it to our mythology: the lawlessness of the Wild West. Yet it seems that lawlessness with this kind of ease-to-impact ratio is unprecedented.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#36

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.

How would they decide who wins?

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#38

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.

> Nobody dies, some money is lost, some important people are embarrassed

If there's one thing the Sony breach and other major hacks over the last few years have illustrated, it's that there is no clear limit to the damage that can be done from something like this.

EDIT: To me, what's so frightening about this is the lack of historical precedent for conflicts between nations in the form of cyberwarfare. We don't know what could happen. We don't know if the damage will be limited to financial cost and embarrassment, and we don't know that a scuffle between nations on the Internet will remain contained as such.

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#39

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?

My gut feeling is yes, that's illegal. If not, then the US is even more self-righteous than it appears!

Re: Attack Is Suspected as North Korean Internet Collapses

#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 brought it down", while the second "NK Internet IPs were \"withdrawn\" from the net".

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