US seeks China help against North Korea cyberattacks after Sony hack – report

[JonLP24]

Source: The Guardian

The US government has reportedly asked China to help block North Korea’s ability to launch cyberattacks, in the wake of the massive hack of Sony Pictures.

Administration officials told the New York Times the sought-for cooperation was one of the first steps toward the “proportional response” President Barack Obama promised on Friday in his first comments on the fiasco.

“What we are looking for is a blocking action, something that would cripple their efforts to carry out attacks,” an official told the Times.

China’s cooperation would be essential to any attempt to crack down on North Korea’s cyber-warfare operations, as the country’s telecommunications run through Chinese-operated networks.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/20/us-china-north-korea-cyberattacks-sony-pictures-hack

[delrem]

1. I wonder if China will respond by asking the US to stop its own hacking?

I've been in discussions on DU with people who think it's perfectly OK for the US to hack into every foreign communication, including the most secure and existentially important economic and political networks.

These are the few folk who also aren't distressed in the least about US intelligence agencies, in cooperation with the agencies of countries across the English speaking world, building databases profiling themselves. So it's no wonder that they don't give a shit in general.

Ah well, poor Sony. Hacked by the evil North Korea. I'm crying real tears.

[jakeXT]

8. I'm interested in the latest one in Germany

Cyberattack on German Iron Plant Causes ‘Widespread Damage’: Report

A German federal agency has acknowledged in a report Wednesday that a cyberattack caused physical damage to an iron plant in the country. It was a rare admission by a government tying a cyber action to actual physical destruction.

The attackers gained access to an unnamed plant’s office network through a targeted malicious email and were ultimately able to cross over into the production network. The plant’s control systems were breached which “resulted in an incident where a furnace could not be shut down in the regular way and the furnace was in an undefined condition which resulted in massive damage to the whole system,” according to the report, called the IT Security Situation in Germany in 2014.

The report is created annually by Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security. The agency, known as Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik or BSI, is in charge of managing computer and communication security for the German government including critical infrastructure. The agency did not respond to a request for additional information about the company’s name or the extent of the damage.

It’s rare that a government officially acknowledges a cyberattack that has resulted in physical damage. In November 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that cyberattackers had affected Iran’s centrifuges used in uranium enrichment, according to The Guardian. President Ahmadinejad is believed to have been speaking about the Stuxnet computer worm that attacked the industrial control systems of Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility and destroyed a number of centrifuges. Former U.S. officials have said that Stuxnet was created by the U.S. and Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear program.

http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2014/12/18/cyberattack-on-german-iron-plant-causes-widespread-damage-report/

[DeSwiss]

2. ''Blocking action?''

- Something like this, maybe?





It helps one to cope if life is viewed as dark comedy.......

[Renew Deal]

3. How would that work?

It doesn't make sense.

[drm604]

4. Can they help?

I've heard it reported that the hack, while committed by individuals acting on behalf of NK, physically originated outside NK.
If that's correct, then blocking their telecommunications running through China wouldn't prevent this same type of attack.

[L0oniX]

5. Block all N. Korean ip numbers on OC1. Start with 175.45.177.*

Yea they can proxy around that but this would be a good start and easy to do.

[daleo]

6. China may have been involved, according to this BBC article

But what the FBI is very careful not to say is whether it thinks the attack was controlled from within North Korea itself - although in a press conference President Barack Obama did say there was no indication of another nation state being part of the hacking.

This is an important detail to pick apart.

Experts think it's unlikely, if indeed it was North Korea, that the country could have acted alone. Unnamed US officials quoted by Reuters said the US was considering that people operating out of China, with its considerable cyber-attack capability, may have been involved.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30554444

[father founding]

7. Wheres Waldo ?

Another Nation State can be anyone, including those in the Middle East.

[TwilightGardener]

9. Sure... uh...good luck with that.

[YankmeCrankme]

10. Why is this such a big concern to US?

Sony is a Japanese company, shouldn't they be the ones miffed about this more than the US? I don't remember the US being this put off when Iran's computers were hacked by a foreign power.

Ah, the hypocrisy.

[FormerOstrich]

11. Well this makes about as much sense as everything I have read about the hack

North Korea does not have the bandwidth to have moved the volume of data which was stolen.

What exactly are they asking to be blocked?