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Was North Korea Behind the U.S./South Korean DDOS Attacks?

pcworld.com — The cyberattacks that took down prominent U.S. and South Korean Web sites in the last week have apparently ended but the search for those responsible is only just beginning. North Korea has emerged as a likely culprit, especially among politicians, but was it really behind the attacks?

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 10, 2009

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  • inactive, on 07/10/2009, -4/+35That's just silly.

    Everybody knows the NK's don't have computers.

    ...or electricity

    ... or infrastructure

    ... or food
  • inactive, on 07/10/2009, -2/+30It was just a botnet, chill the ***** out.
  • artwhite, on 07/10/2009, -7/+26Was there really a cyber attack? Corruption seems to be the norm these days. The corporate own mass media lie all the time for their vested interests. People are treated like dumb cattle ready to be scammed
  • RcFromTwitter, on 10/10/2009, -0/+14Well... Kim Jong-Il IS an internet expert!
  • m0tbaillie, on 07/10/2009, -2/+15That's what I've been telling people. The media needs to shut the ***** up and do 5 minutes of Googling before they start trying to spread this hysteric *****. This wasn't a "cyberattack" it was a trivial act that any script-kiddie could carry out.
  • akaz, on 07/10/2009, -2/+14I was thinking the same. Sounds pretty suspicious to blame North Korea so hastily.
  • DankNugzPlz, on 07/10/2009, -0/+10I'm very skeptical to believe these claims. Could be just another pre-war build up of faulty information to build support to invade another country.
  • harrisbradley, on 07/10/2009, -0/+8The "War On Error"
  • directedition, on 07/10/2009, -2/+10"Was North Korea Behind the U.S./South Korean DDOS Attacks?"

    BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The absurdity of the question is killing me. For god's sake, North Korea's official websites are hosted in Japan. North Korea's idea of DDOS is to get lots of people to keep calling the web space provider's help desk number and try to tie-up the line.
  • brentcee23, on 07/10/2009, -1/+9North Korea did this..Hahahahah hilarious! They can't even photoshop - http://www.reddit.com/search?q=north+korea+photosh ...
  • inactive, on 07/10/2009, -0/+8yeah good luck hacking the pentagon with an abacus
  • harrisbradley, on 07/10/2009, -0/+7I think it's time for a good old fashion intercontinental hacker war!
  • cheddaro, on 07/10/2009, -2/+8Hopefully this turns into a WarGames scenario.

    Some kid in Russia (because all of these kids are in Russia) is launching these DDOS attacks all over the world, and making it look like they are coming from North Korea.

    Then we launch a bunch of missiles at North Korea and the Russian kid ***** Ally Sheedy?
  • vbullinger, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5They can't afford those.
  • vman81, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5North Korea is BEST Korea!
  • yocouchdigga, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5just take one look at Kim Jong II's glasses and tell me he's not a super 1337 h4x0r.
  • Sil369, on 07/10/2009, -0/+4it was al queda!!
    they're attacking the internets now!!
  • vbullinger, on 07/10/2009, -0/+4Wow, such a well-reasoned, thorough argument. You have me convinced.
  • FujoGusto, on 07/10/2009, -2/+6I'm pretty sure it was those GODDAMN MONGORIANS!
  • inactive, on 07/10/2009, -2/+6That was just an eloquent rewrite of my post...

    9000 diggs for you.
  • akaz, on 07/10/2009, -1/+5Don't worry; it has happened before.
  • d3dm, on 07/10/2009, -0/+3e-Ville
  • vbullinger, on 07/10/2009, -0/+3Sure they do: we sold them the technology!
  • N3M3515, on 07/10/2009, -0/+3its pretty hard to say yeah its NK specifically, obviously its a network of zombies not very high tech utilizing echo requests.
  • N3M3515, on 07/10/2009, -0/+3Well, NK has a subnet of the Chinese block, thus you know the ip space is allocated to NK. Does that mean you know that NK is behind the DDOS attack? Obviously not. It could be an American for all we know.
  • brkello, on 07/10/2009, -0/+3I thought it was because everyone was looking up websites about the death of celebrities.
  • asgardshill, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2And they all went to ***** Wok afterward for some ... leaves and grass.
  • inactive, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2I'm not American, but I cant help but think that American hackers would ***** pwn North Korean hackers...
  • macinit1138, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2North Korea probably only has one computer that they can't get parts for.
  • Schweppesale, on 07/10/2009, -1/+3if you read the article, it clearly states that NK uses the Chinese block of IP addresses. How can you possibly differenciate between NK and the rest of that area?
  • wtrwlkr, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2I'm pretty sure Koreans are yellow.
  • 4degrees, on 07/11/2009, -0/+2That was a whole lot of nothing.
  • JohnnySoftware, on 07/12/2009, -0/+2WHY the heck did everyone "assume it was North Korea"?

    Virtually all of these Botnet DDoS attacks have been kicked off by little kids and/or professional criminals.

    People are so easily misled by fake evidence such as the case where the creator of the NetSky worm created different versions and had supposedly different organizations between the respective ones airing their differences/dislikes for each other in them.

    But here is a case where there is no evidence and people are quick to quote a random no-name's unsubstantiated belief that it was North Korea.

    Imagine what clueless prize idiots we will look like if it turns out not to have been North Korea and we are ineffective about capturing and stopping/punishing those who actually are responsible - and fail to apologize to those parties we wrongly accused.

    There's no cred for accusing the wrong guy with no evidence.
  • SONYDVDR, on 07/11/2009, -0/+2...One country, under Anon, indivisible with DDos and Chat spam for all.
  • YoYoYoImcool, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2Everyone knows its China, doesn't take much light to see that one
  • vbullinger, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2As succinct as it gets while still painting a perfect picture. Well done.
  • dougieo, on 07/11/2009, -0/+2"I would like one state-of-the-art AGP graphics card"
  • vbullinger, on 07/10/2009, -2/+4They have a habit of doing that: blaming Richard Jewel for the Olympic Park bombing when he didn't do it, blaming the Ramseys for killing their daughter when they didn't do it and blaming Osama Bin Laden like six seconds after the World Trade Center attacks.
  • varble, on 07/11/2009, -0/+2WWW1
  • JohnnySoftware, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1So far there has been no need to guess. Haven't you read the papers this year?
  • JohnnySoftware, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1Well, if history is a guide didn't the US attack Iraq out of unsubstantiated suspicon that they had nuclear weapons with the so-called "evidence" being from a known pathological liar working at Burger King in Germany?

    And ultimately, didn't the US plan to press charges against a US government anthrax researcher with right-leaning warhawk tendencies? The US declared the case closed and done when he killed himself.

    If the attackers turn out to be kids in the US or organized crime gangs in Canada or a friendly European nation are you demand that nukes get flung on them.

    Honestly, we have laws and we have Interpool and the FBI and stuff. Not every problem and certainly not every computer problem needs to be solved with military force.

    This particular problem could clearly have been prevented from happening in the first place if flaws exploited had been fixed sooner, if people had bothered to apply patches (if any were relevant and did not involve accepting an objectionable change to the SLA put in by Microsoft), and computer users had not accepted running a downloaded file from some web site that they got by email.
  • JohnnySoftware, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1Saddam wasn't bluffing either. There was no evidence that he had nuclear weapons and evidence is that he destroyed his chemical WOMDs as directed a decade earlier when G. Bush Sr. demanded it.

    You can't really destroy something twice. Destroy is a destructive operation.
  • macinit1138, on 07/13/2009, -0/+1I was thinking Commodore Vic 20.
  • JohnnySoftware, on 07/12/2009, -0/+1It wasn't just media sites that were being targeted. It sounds like news media sites were in the minority. And it was a botnet that was the attacker, not people sitting at keyboards.
  • inactive, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1hahahahahaha
  • inactive, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1North Korea and the Peoples Republic of China have dedicated cyber warfare units.

    In the case of NK just to be a pain in the ass is perfectly in character for the current "Great Leader".

    We can only guess at the PRCs hackers are up to.
  • wtrwlkr, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1Reminds me of the bit on the Daily Show where Stewart was talking about Iran and CGI 'lil Kim comes along begging for attention. Wish I could find the video.
  • inactive, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1No.
  • VBTech, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1Doesn't it make sense that it could simply be some random ass black hats attempting to do exactly this? You know, make everyone assume that North Korea is behind the DDoS attacks, and attempt to, perhaps, be responsible for the first ignition of war supported by something relevant to the internet?

    There's no definitive answer, speculatively speaking. Could it have been North Korea? Sure. Do I particularly believe that it was? Doubting it.
  • dougieo, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1I wonder what race Kim Jong-Il plays...
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