Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

koreajoongangdaily.joins.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 987 posts

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

#781

Post by tirant »

vgivanovic wrote: post #334
alephnerd wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are overwhelmingly whitelabeled providers. For example, Samsung SDI Cloud (the largest "Korean" cloud) is an AWS white label. Korea is great at a lot of engineering disciplines. Sadly, software is not one of them, though it's slowly changing. There was a similar issue a couple years ago where the government's internal intranet was down a couple days because someone deployed a switch in front of outbound connecti…

I am very happy with the software that powers my Hyundai Tuscon hybrid. (It's a massive system that runs the gas and electric engines, recharging, shifting gears, braking, object detection, and a host of information and entertainment systems.) After 2 years, 0 crashes and no observable errors. Of course, nothing is perfect: maps suck. The navigation is fine; it's the display that is at least 2 decades behind the time…

I’ve driven a Tucson several times recently (rental). It did not crash but it was below acceptable. A 15 year old VW Golf has better handling than the Tucson.

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

#782

Post by tirant »

sneak wrote: post #502
eCa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree completely that it's absolute wild to run such a system without backups. But at this point no government should keep critical data on foreign cloud storage.

It's 2025. Encryption is a thing now. You can store anything you want on foreign cloud storage. I'd give my backups to the FSB.

Encryption does not ensure any type of availability.

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

#783

Post by jedimastert »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #292

Article comments aside, it is entirely unclear to me whether or not there was no backups. Certainly no "external" backups, but potentially "internal" backups. My thinking is that not actually allowing backups and forcing all data there creates a prime target for the PRK folks right? I've been in low level national defense meetings about security where things like "you cannot backup off site" are discussed but there a…

> My thinking is that not actually allowing backups and forcing all data there creates a prime target for the PRK folks right?

It's funny that you mention that...

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

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

#784

Post by msl »

egorfine wrote: post #697
hiharryhere wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government isn’t perfect but I’d be interested to know what alternative you propose?

a) Incarceration time for IT execs and responsible engineers. b) Let companies go out of business once they fail to protect their own crucial data. None of that is possible.

Responsible for what? If the government does not mandate any behavior, what basis does it have to incarcerate anyone?

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

#785

Post by gregoriol »

yetihehe wrote: post #623
jeroenhd wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you'd encrypt the data before uploading it to a third party, but there's no reason why that third party should be under control of a foreign government. South Korea has more than one data center they can store data inside of, there's no need to trust other governments sigh every byte of data you've gathered, even if there are no known backdoors or flaws in your encryption mechanism (which I'm sure some gove…

There is a reason that NIST recommends new encryption algorithms from time to time. If you get a copy of ALL government data, in 20 years you might be able to break encryption and get access to ALL government data from 20yr ago, no matter how classified they were, if they were stored in that cloud. Such data might still be valuable, because not all data is published after some period.

If you are really paranoid to that point, you probably wouldn't follow NIST recommendations for encryption algorithms as it is part of the Department of Commerce of the United States, even more in today's context.

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

#786

Post by qzw »

stego-tech wrote: post #773
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is not refusing to use a foreign third party. That makes sense. The issue is mandating the use of remote storage and not backing it up. That’s insane. It’s like the most basic amount of preparation you do. It’s recommended to even the smallest of companies specifically because a fire is a risk. That’s gross mismanagement.

This. Speaking specifically from the IT side of things, an employer or customer refusing to do backups is the biggest red flag I can get, an immediate warning to run the fuck away before you get blamed for their failure, stego-tech kind of situation. That being said, I can likely guess where this ends up going: * Current IT staff and management are almost certainly scapegoated for “allowing this to happen”, despite t…

I abhor the general trend of governments outsourcing everything to private companies, but in this case, a technologically advanced country’s central government couldn’t even muster up the most basic of IT practices, and as you said, accountability will likely not rest with the people actually responsible for this debacle. Even a nefarious cloud services CEO couldn’t dream up a better sales case for the wholesale outsourcing of such infrastructure in the future.

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

#787

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

flakeoil wrote: post #767
trivo wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems everyone ouside of US is bad at producing software.

Yes, and US bad at everything else.

The US economy is one of the world's most diverse in terms of exports:

https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/usa/all/...

Side note: Why is there so much fact-free anti-US sentiment on HN?

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

#788

Post by m01 »

sbinnee wrote: post #555

What a sad news as a Korean to see a post about Korea at the top of HN during one of the largest Korean holiday. I can share an anecdote how slow tech adoption is in Korea. It is not exactly about tech in public section but in private companies. I assume public section has slower adoption rate than private ones in general. Just about a year ago I had a couple of projects with insurance companies. I won't name them bu…

> I can share an anecdote how slow tech adoption is in Korea. It is not exactly about tech in public section but in private companies. I assume public section has slower adoption rate than private ones in general.

I guess it's not all tech, but at least in telecoms I thought they were very quick to adopt new tech? 2nd in the world to commercially deploy 3G W-CDMA, world first LTE-Advanced [1], "first fairly substantial deployments" of 5G [2]. 90% of broadband via fibre (used to be #1 amongst OECD countries for some time, now it's only just #2).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SK_Telecom#History

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G#Deployment

[3] https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/broadband-statisti... -> Percentage of fibre connections in total broadband (June 2024) spreadsheet link

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

#789

Post by ubermonkey »

kristianc wrote: post #95

The government official who insisted that commercial AWS/GCP/Azure couldn't possibly be trusted with keeping the information will be keeping their head low for a few days then... "The Interior Ministry explained that while most systems at the Daejeon data center are backed up daily to separate equipment within the same center and to a physically remote backup facility, the G-Drive’s structure did not allow for extern…

I was once advised to measure your backup security in zip codes and time zones.

You have a backup copy of your file, in the same folder? That helps for some "oops" moments, but nothing else.

You have a whole backup DRIVE on your desktop? That's better. Physical failure of the primary device is no longer a danger. But your house could burn down.

You have an alternate backup stored at a trusted friend's house across the street? Better! But what if a major natural disaster happens?

True life, 30+ years ago when I worked for TeleCheck, data was their lifeblood. Every week a systems operator went to Denver, the alternate site, with a briefcase full of backup tapes. TeleCheck was based in Houston, so a major hurricane could've been a major problem.

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

#790

Post by pchew »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #640
sbinnee wrote: post #555

What a sad news as a Korean to see a post about Korea at the top of HN during one of the largest Korean holiday. I can share an anecdote how slow tech adoption is in Korea. It is not exactly about tech in public section but in private companies. I assume public section has slower adoption rate than private ones in general. Just about a year ago I had a couple of projects with insurance companies. I won't name them bu…

Things South Korea is good at producing: Cars, ships, steel, semiconductors, electronics, medicines, tanks, aircraft parts, nuclear reactors... Things South Korea is bad at producing: Software. Not too bad overall.

Interesting interpretation of 'good' in regards to cars.
Post reply on HN