Fire destroys S. Korean government's cloud storage system, no backups available • Hacker News Board

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

#831

Post by fauigerzigerk » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

johannes1234321 wrote: post #751

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that you cannot choose who you're sharing a road with while you can usually choose your IT service providers. You could, for instance, choose a cheaper provider and make your own backups or simply accept that you could lose your data. Where people have little or no choice (e.g government agencies, telecoms, internet access providers, credit agencies, etc) or where the blast radius is exceptionally w…

Losing data is mostly(*) fine if you are a small business. If a major bank loses it's data it is a major problem as it may impact a huge number of customers and an existential way, when all money is "gone" (*) From state's perspective there is still a problem: tax audits, bad if everybody avoids them by "accidental" data loss

As I said, a wide blast radius is a justification and banks are already regulated accordingly. A general obligation to keep financial records exists as well.

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

#832

Post by palmotea » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

tooltalk wrote: post #654

thanatos519 wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Backups should be far away, too. Apparently some companies lost everything on 9/11 because their backups were in the other tower.

Some foolishly believed that the twin towers were invincible after the 1993 WTC bombing. Before 9/11, most DR (disaster recovery) sites were in Jersey City, NJ just across the river from their main offices in WFC or WTC, or roughly 3-5 miles away. After 9/11, the financial industry adopted a 50+ miles rule.

Before 9/11, most DR (disaster recovery) sites were in Jersey City, NJ just across the river from their main offices in WFC or WTC, or roughly 3-5 miles away. After 9/11, the financial industry adopted a 50+ miles rule.

IIRC, multiple IBM mainframes can be setup so they run and are administered as a single system for DR, but there are distance limits.

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

#833

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

kmoser wrote: post #816

blacklion wrote: post #793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One-time pad is provable secure. But it is not useful for backups, of course.

Even OTP is not secure if others have access to it.

Every castle wall can be broken with money.

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

#834

Post by 8cvor6j844qw_d6 » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:31 PM UTC

1oooqooq wrote: post #812

georgethedrab wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thanks for the info, canceling proton rn

proton is alternative to gmail still. you replace nsa and ad networks with nsa only. it's a win.

Currently, still on Proton for its aliasing service but keeping my eye out for a suitable replacement candidate.

Thankfully I made the right choice to stay on Bitwarden instead of moving to Proton Pass.

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

#835

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

bboygravity wrote: post #820

msbhvn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Woah, read the timeline at the top of this. The fire happened the very day the government ordered onsite inspection was supposed to start due to Chinese/NK hacking.

The good news is: there are still off-site backups. The bad news is: they're in North Korea.

"Your Holiness! I have terrible news! Jesus has returned!"

"But that's a blessed event? How could that be terrible?"

"He appeared in Salt Lake City."

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

#836

Post by cindyllm » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

[dead]

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

#837

Post by derleyici » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

acchow wrote: post #593

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…

They did have backups. But the backups were also destroyed in the same fire.

Then it's just incompetence. Even I have my backup server 100 km away from the master one.

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

#838

Post by IAmBroom » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

southernplaces7 wrote: post #525

trhway wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such coincidences do happen. 20 years ago the plane which was carrying all the top brass of the Russian Black Sea Fleet as well as the Fleet’s accounting documentation for inspection to Moscow burst in flames and fell to the ground while trying to get airborne. Being loaded with fuel it immediately became one large infernal fireball. By some miracle no top brass suffered even minor burn/injury while all the accountin…

One hell of an act of God that... Believable though, given the consistent transparency and low corruption in the Russian government's administration.

Golf clap, lasting several minutes.

Bravo, old boy.

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

#839

Post by lumost » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

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…

Usually these mandates are made by someone who evaluates “risks.” Third party risks are evaluated under the assumption that everything will be done sensibly in the 1p scenario, to boot, the 1p option will be cheaper as disk drives etc are only a fraction of total cost.

Reality hits later when budget cuts/constrained salaries prevent the maintenance of a competent team. Or the proposed backup system is deemed as excessively risk averse and the money can’t be spared.

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

#840

Post by NetMageSCW » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 2:42 PM UTC

j45 wrote: post #693

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…

They put everything only in one datacenter. A datacenter located elsewhere should have been setup to mirror. This has nothing to do with commercial clouds. Commercial clouds are just datacenters. They could pick one commercial cloud data center and not do much more to mirror or backup in different regions. I understand some of the services have inherent backups.

Mirroring is not backup.