I am not pro russian but you've got a point. The amount of hacking attributed, should we believe, to North Korea is beyond belief: we're supposed to to believe that a country which cannot properly Photoshop a picture (to make believe they've got military hoovercrafts!) and where there are still people eating roots, and where they're best computing feat is to change Red Hat Linux's background wallpaper is...
Full of top-notch hacker infiltrating all the western world's infra?
> we're supposed to to believe that a country which cannot properly Photoshop a picture (to make believe they've got military hoovercrafts!) and where there are still people eating roots, and where they're best computing feat is to change Red Hat Linux's background wallpaper is...
That's a 1990s and early 2000s image of North Korea.
Sanctions are way less biting in NK now that China, Vietnam, and Russia have become much more affluent compared to back then.
It's fairly common for the North Korean government to send their top talent to study CS in China, Russia, and Vietnam, and work as unofficial contractors as well as conduct attacks from abroad.
Vietnam used to be a very common source of attack for that reason, due to it's permissiveness for Chinese and Korean (North and South) visitors, and why Vietnamese IP blocks tend to blocked by most western WAFs, and North Korean MSPs have been caught operating in Vietnam a lot.
Also, poverty never stopped a country from building a strong MIC. Look at China, India, and Pakistan's domestic MIC capabilities which began being built in the 1970s-80s.
To quote former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan - "We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will have our own atom bomb" (early 1970s).
I also wouldn't judge technical prowess based on inability to use Photoshop or other basic tech correctly. Lots of Chinese and Indian government websites are riddled with misconfigured access controls, open ports, and unpatched stacks yet it doesn't mean these countries don't have the ability to innovate military technology.
Low overall skill level in the populace is not the same as isolated competence.
And in software, you really only need isolated competence. We've seen repeated examples in the West where a team of 10-20 highly competent engineers is able to run circles around 10,000 person orgs filled with bureaucrats, managers, and questionable hires.
NK sends a few people to China to train, or even just imports from China, and if they prove themselves capable, says, "We're going to make you part of our elite spy hacking force. We'll pay you $10 million/year." Suddenly the highly competent hacker is living like a king and NK has their spy force. Not so far-fetched.
I agree in part — a lot of the attribution is extremely weak and based entirely on some correlation of previously weakly attributed tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP in security parlance). Also, I think the effort in describing all these threats in this way is misplaced, but that's an entirely different rant.
The counter is North Korea in actually capable of pulling off these attacks because of just how bad things are on the internet and how little skill is actually required to pull off a devastating attack. Even in situations where there isn't active exploit development programs in-country, exploits and exploitation frameworks are available on GitHub or for purchase. We have no idea what sort of controls are in place to prevent someone like North Korea from getting access to Pegasus, Core Impact, or Canvas VulnDisco exploits, plus the support and tooling they receive from friendly countries like China.
I can tell you for a fact that NK is not responsible for most of the reported hacks attributed to them, and this is simply a case of 'point at the easy to blame entity' the US plays.
TacticalCoder|1 year ago
Full of top-notch hacker infiltrating all the western world's infra?
Please. Just fucking please.
alephnerd|1 year ago
That's a 1990s and early 2000s image of North Korea.
Sanctions are way less biting in NK now that China, Vietnam, and Russia have become much more affluent compared to back then.
It's fairly common for the North Korean government to send their top talent to study CS in China, Russia, and Vietnam, and work as unofficial contractors as well as conduct attacks from abroad.
Vietnam used to be a very common source of attack for that reason, due to it's permissiveness for Chinese and Korean (North and South) visitors, and why Vietnamese IP blocks tend to blocked by most western WAFs, and North Korean MSPs have been caught operating in Vietnam a lot.
Also, poverty never stopped a country from building a strong MIC. Look at China, India, and Pakistan's domestic MIC capabilities which began being built in the 1970s-80s.
To quote former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan - "We will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will have our own atom bomb" (early 1970s).
I also wouldn't judge technical prowess based on inability to use Photoshop or other basic tech correctly. Lots of Chinese and Indian government websites are riddled with misconfigured access controls, open ports, and unpatched stacks yet it doesn't mean these countries don't have the ability to innovate military technology.
hnthrowaway6543|1 year ago
And in software, you really only need isolated competence. We've seen repeated examples in the West where a team of 10-20 highly competent engineers is able to run circles around 10,000 person orgs filled with bureaucrats, managers, and questionable hires.
NK sends a few people to China to train, or even just imports from China, and if they prove themselves capable, says, "We're going to make you part of our elite spy hacking force. We'll pay you $10 million/year." Suddenly the highly competent hacker is living like a king and NK has their spy force. Not so far-fetched.
clwg|1 year ago
The counter is North Korea in actually capable of pulling off these attacks because of just how bad things are on the internet and how little skill is actually required to pull off a devastating attack. Even in situations where there isn't active exploit development programs in-country, exploits and exploitation frameworks are available on GitHub or for purchase. We have no idea what sort of controls are in place to prevent someone like North Korea from getting access to Pegasus, Core Impact, or Canvas VulnDisco exploits, plus the support and tooling they receive from friendly countries like China.
azinman2|1 year ago
denton-scratch|1 year ago
I can't imagine a world without potatoes.
rasengan|1 year ago
boffinAudio|1 year ago
First of all, nationalistic hubris-derived agitprop is still agitprop.
Second of all, Vault 7 is a very, very real thing.
The mere existence of Vault 7, alone, should be reason enough for us all to be embracing this.