N. Korea trains 500. Readies for cyber-war. Yikes. Evil gamers.

[henslee]

North Korea has trained more than 500 computer hackers capable of launching cyber warfare against the United States, South Korea's defense ministry says.

In a report to the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, the ministry said that hackers from the impoverished Stalinist state were among the best in the world.

"North Korea's intelligence warfare capability is estimated to have reached the level of advanced countries," the report said, according to Yonhap news agency.

The military hackers had been put through a five-year university course training them to penetrate the computer systems of South Korea, the United States and Japan, the report added. Their goal, it said, was to gather intelligence or to launch a cyber attack.


http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/109911/1/.html

[benito]

1. If North Korea

publically say that they have 500 crackers , you might as well triple that number.

[Nerdling]

2. This needs to be taken seriously.

These fucktards can do massive damage from just one computer. It is a very real threat and i'd even condone sending people to murder them one by one.

Nuclear power plants in America traditionally run on Windows 2000 servers. It is a simple matter of busting through their security and... well, its winter.

[Occulus]

8. oh BAH

read my post below.

I've been a techie for over a decade. These guys making these threats can suck me.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. I bet we've trained 100 times that number.

[Iceburg]

4. Yes, in India

[gordianot]

5. And they have left Government for private sector jobs.

[Occulus]

6. Hehehe heh

Ooooh, I'm scared.

Here's what our government should do in such a case:

As soon as an attack is recognised as such, put out a plea on usenet, forums, and so forth that they need "white hat" hackers to bog the following ip addresses: blah.blihblah.blagh.bleah and publicize the fact that it was an attack.

PUH-leeeze. Do they REALLY think this is going to scare anyone? We're prepared and have been for some time. Thanks to OSes like linux, and distros such as PHLAK (the Professional Hacker's Linux Assault Kit, which contains declassified NSA hacking and sysadmin documents as part of its documentation, and which runs directly from a CDROM- boots from it, in fact), they can do what they like, but our hackers will stop them*.

Now quit looking at me like that and go close those open ports. :) (hint)

*linux is open source, meaning (among other things) that anyone anywhere can get it and run it free. The linux community is rather large worldwide, and its users as well as the internet itself will view such attacks as only so much damage. The internet routes around damage.

Hack away! You *might* slow things down for an hour or two.

[gordianot]

9. Right

There is more high level talent in the United States at all levels than any of these people can muster. The cyber wars have been going on for years.

[Occulus]

11. this kind of talent can be self-taught

ALL the manuals and "little secrets" are out there, writ large for all to see.

You must not spend much time on usenet.... or IRC...... or using Archie (wow, that's an oldie!). You would know this otherwise.

They're using old tools and tricks in new packages, but that's something that hackers and more lately script kiddies have been doing for some time. That just goes with the territory of open-source software. I really, honestly doubt there's much "new" that they're doing outside of new software exploits- just because the software packages they're using or interfacing with has been around for quite some time.

Micro$oft is a vulnerability and always has been. UNIX and linux are much more difficult to successfully hack into if the necessary precautions have been taken. Same for Mac. I don't know about VMS or SPARC, or any of the even more obscure systems out there. I'm only an end user. Now.

I run linux, though, so if we're ever under attack and I go into a chat room somewhere, I'm sure people will be communicating the fact and writing scripts on the fly to combat it. I've seen such before, when NOT under "attack" in the military sense of the word.

Trust me, they can try, but they won't succeed. There are too many people not only here but in the rest of the world that are concerned with keepiqng the black hats out, and I'm positive when push comes to shove, if they know anything, they'll share it. That's just how it works.

edit: Archie doesn't exist anymore, much to my chagrin. It was the filesharing application before there was filesharing, but I suppose eDonkey et al have supplanted it in spectacular fashion. My apologies if I confused anyone by mentioning it.

[gordianot]

12. Remember the flap a couple years ago the Spyplane with China.

There were several lame attempts on American web sites. Everyday hackers in the USA retaliated and that stopped quickly when Chinese Government web sites were compromised in a way they could see what was going on.

[porphyrian]

7. I've already seen some of their tactics...

It goes like this:

V1agr@,x@naX,perc0s3t===
G3t pr{sc1p5 @ GR8 pr1c35!!!!

[Occulus]

10. don't ya love 733T?

Oh, that lingo!!

<SNORK>