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Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

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Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#341

Post by lucb1e »

layer8 wrote: post #62

Some more details in this article: https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/10/02/FPWGFS...

> The stored data amounts to 858TB (terabytes), equivalent to 449.5 billion A4 sheets.

This attempt at putting it in perspective makes me wonder what would put it in perspective. "100M sets of harry potter novels" would be one step in the right direction, but nobody can imagine 100M of anything either. Something like "a million movies" wouldn't work because they are very different from text media in terms of how much information is in one, even if the bulk of the data is likely media. It's an interesting problem even if this article's attempt is so bad it's almost funny

Good article otherwise though, indeed a lot more detail than the OP. It should probably replace the submission. Edit: dang was 1 minute faster than me :)

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#342

Post by guillem_lefait »

luispauloml wrote: post #288
Frost1x wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having just visited South Korea last year, one thing that sort of caught me off guard was the lack of Google Maps or other major direction system. I wasn’t aware but turns out anything considered “detailed mapping” infrastructure has to be ran stored and on South Korean soil, probably lots of other requirements. So you’re stuck with some shotty local mapping systems that are just bad. There may be a point in time it…

>So you’re stuck with some shotty local mapping systems that are just bad. What made you think of them as bad? Could you be more specific? I use them almost daily and I find them very good.

I was there few months ago and I found them to be quite good too, both in coverage (shops, bus/metro networks) and accuracy. Obviously, not the apps I'm used to so & the language but otherwise, it was okay.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#343

Post by lucb1e »

lostmsu wrote: post #58
727564797069706 wrote: post #56

Meanwhile, Estonia has a "data embassy" in Luxembourg: https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/data-embassy/ TL;DR: Estonia operates a Tier 4 (highest security) data center in Luxembourg with diplomatic immunity. Can actively run critical government services in real-time, not just backups.

This comment is in some way more interesting than the topic of the article.

Definitely. Especially when considering that there were 95 other systems in this datacentre which do have backups and

> The actual number of users is about 17% of all central government officials

Far from all, and they're not sure what's recoverable yet ("“It’s difficult to determine exactly what data has been lost.”")

Which is not to say that it's not big news ("the damage to small business owners who have entered amounts to 12.6 billion Korean won.” The ‘National Happiness Card,’ used for paying childcare fees, etc., is still ‘non-functional.’"), but to put it a bit in perspective and not just "all was lost" as the original submission basically stated

Quotes from https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2025/10/02/FPWGFS... as linked by u/layer8 elsewhere in this thread

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#344

Post by lucb1e »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #69

what's the point of a storage system with no back up?

Isn't that self-evident? Do you have two microwaves from different batches, regularly tested, solely for the eventuality that one breaks? Systems work fine until some (unlikely) risk manifests...

Idk if this sounds like I'm against backups, I'm not, I'm just surprised by the question

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#345

Post by [deleted] »

quantumsequoia wrote: post #327
nowittyusername wrote: post #314

I must say, at least for me personally when I hear about such levels of incompetence it rings alarm bells in my head making me think that maybe intentional malice was involved. Like someone higher up had set up the whole thing to happen in such a matter because there was a benefit to this happening we are unaware of. I think this belief maybe stems from lack of imagination on how really stupid humans can get.

Most people overestimate the prevalence of malice, und underestimate the prevalence of incompetence

[deleted]

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#347

Post by jacquesm »

xoa wrote: post #337
jacquesm wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm aware of a big cloud services provider (I won't name any names but it was IBM) that lost a fairly large amount of data. Permanently. So that too isn't a guarantee. They simply should have made local and off-line backups, that's the gold standard, and to ensure that those backups are complete and can be used to restore from scratch to a complete working service.

> I'm aware of a big cloud services provider (I won't name any names but it was IBM) that lost a fairly large amount of data. Permanently. So that too isn't a guarantee. Permanently losing data at a given store point isn't relevant to losing data overall. Data store failures are assumed or else there'd be no point in backups. What matters is whether failures in multiple points happen at the same time , which means a…

> Permanently losing data at a given store point isn't relevant to losing data overall.

I can't reveal any details but it was a lot more than just a given storage point. The interesting thing is that there were multiple points along the way where the damage would have been recoverable but their absolute incompetence made matters much worse to the point where there were no options left.

> FWIW there's no "simply" about that though at large scale. I'm not saying it's undoable at all but it's not trivial. As is literally the subject here.

If you can't do the job you should get out of the kitchen.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#348

Post by makeitdouble »

covercash wrote: post #302
gtirloni wrote: post #126

wow https://x.com/koryodynasty/status/1973956091638890499 > A senior government official overseeing recovery efforts for South Korea's national network crisis has reportedly died by suicide in Sejong.

If the US government and corporate executives had even half this level of shame, we'd have nobody left in those positions!

"suicide" in these circumstances is usually something else altogether.

Even in cases it is executed by themselves, shame won't be the primary motivation.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#349

Post by DHolzer »

lukevp wrote: post #310
VirusNewbie wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

How’s that? Using encryption, which is known to have backdoors and is vulnerable to nation state cracking?

Please provide any proof or references to what you are claiming.

Re: Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available

#350

Post by lwhi »

baobun wrote: post #319
jn78 wrote: post #80

https://phrack.org/issues/72/7_md#article

> 27th of September 2025, The fire is believed to have been caused while replacing Lithium-ion batteries. The batteries were manufactured by LG, the parent company of LG Uplus (the one that got hacked by the APT). Compromised batteries or battery controllers?

Witness A said, “It appears that the fire started when a spark flew during the process of replacing the uninterruptible power supply,” and added, “Firefighters are currently out there putting out the fire. I hope that this does not lead to any disruption to the national intelligence network, including the government’s 24 channel.”[1]

[1] https://mbiz.heraldcorp.com/article/10584693

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