By Not everyone thinks North Korea was behind the recent cyber attacks:
After an international cyber attack crippled government and news websites in the U.S. and South Korea early last week, analysts quickly suspected it to be the work of North Korea. A trail of evidence pointed to a series of computers — ones found in homes, schools, and offices — all loaded with a virus to repeatedly visit foreign sites and overwhelm them with traffic, thus making them crash. Some of the attacked sites, like White House’s and Pentagon’s, were able to deter the attacks, while other sites like the US Federal Trade Commission’s experienced periodic black outs for days. But in all actuality, could the rogue military-state really have orchestrated such an effort? At least one technology analyst says no, suggesting that it was a criminal rather than military effort that originated in North Korea. “The structure of the attacks seems to indicate it’s a civilian, cybercriminal effort,” says Susan Brenner, a professor of cyber crimes at the University of Dayton School of Law and author of Cyberthreats: The Emerging Fault Lines of the Nation State. [Newsweek via KimchiGI]
First of all the North Korean regime is a criminal enterprise. The fact that these attacks are the profile of cyber criminals doesn’t mean it is not the work of North Korea. Also according to South Korean officials these attacks are originating from China and a Eastern European country. Depending on which Eastern European country this is, it could further implicate the North Koreans. Finally you have to ask yourself what would a cyber criminal gain from these attacks?
Absolutely nothing, while the North Koreans on the other hand have plenty to gain. First they get to further increase tensions and make more headlines by launching these attacks, but were smart enough to execute them from foreign countries in order to keep plausible deniability. Additionally this provides some good real world experience for North Korea’s cyber warfare unit in order to better prepare them for more sophisticated attacks in the future.
4:10 am on July 13th, 2009 1
Why does the American media go out of its way to do stuff like this?
Why is cutting through convention so chic? So "newsworthy"?
Maybe the famine was caused by floods then drought? Maybe Kim Jong-Il is going to be a technocrat and prove everybody wrong? Maybe they aren't trying to build nuclear weapons with their program but need energy (for a grid that can't support such a thing)? Maybe they really didn't have an uranium enrichment program? Maybe the fact they won't have a fully functional program for a few years means we're lieing about them? Maybe all those markets springing up during the famine were a sign NK is going to reform? Maybe this next promise will be kept?
"At least one expert…" How about STFU unless you have something solid to work with???
Time and time again, we watch as largely ignorant individuals, ignorant in specific reference to North Korea, are paraded out at times in the MSM to say something that helps the North and helps dumb-down the West…
5:06 am on July 13th, 2009 2
Daily NK's Chinese version is now reporting that North Korea has virtual war rooms staffed with computer hackers in Dandong (China), across the Yalu River from Sinuiju. There is one inside the Xinghai Hotel with a fiber-optic network and they're building a bigger one in Dandong with more advanced equipment at an office building across from the Zhonglian Hotel.
According to a National Intelligence Service report, there are also North Korean virtual war rooms in Heilongjiang, Shandong and Fujian provinces as well as Beijing.
http://www.dailynk.com/chinese/read.php?cataId=nk…
11:03 am on July 13th, 2009 3
I wonder if One Free Korea's site has been a target? or is he just doing some redesign?
I've had trouble a day or two since this first began.
Today, whenever I try the bookmark or google a specific page and click it, it tries to launch the same application no matter what page I try for.
12:18 pm on July 13th, 2009 4
Its a sign of the times. All ideas are to be questioned, no matter how valid.(Its the sign of the new intelligencia). Gravity will be next as well as the circumference of the world. According to who's theory is popular. If it sells it gets front page coverage, and a million new adherants.
1:20 pm on July 13th, 2009 5
I noticed that today as well. Hopefully Joshua will get the site back up and running.
6:30 am on July 15th, 2009 6
Uh….never mind.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/…